Amanda Lamb: Last dance

I truly believe it’s prophetic that my 30th college reunion is on the same night as my older daughter’s senior prom — two milestones with very different meanings. Or, are they that different after all?

On one hand their intersection makes me feel old. How could it be that I graduated from college three decades ago? How could it be that I have an 18-year-old daughter?

Just yesterday, I was an 18-year-old college freshman full of anxiety, hopes and dreams for the future. Now, I am an alumni and a mother, a mother who is full of anxiety, hopes and dreams for my daughter as she embarks on the same path.

The real commonality in my mind is that these are both “last dances” in a way. This is the last time my daughter will attend a high school dance on the arm of her boyfriend, surrounded by her childhood friends.

For me, every reunion I attend has the potential to be the “last,” as the friendships, not the physical place, are what I now cherish. I see my college friends outside of our reunion weekends in places that are frankly more fun than a college campus at my age - AKA the beach.

You could look at either event as an ending or a beginning. For my daughter, the senior prom symbolizes the end of high school and the beginning of college. For me, her prom signals the beginning of my long summer of goodbyes to my firstborn. It will be harder than I imagined; I know that now.

The reunion is the ending of my mythical belief that I am still that wide-eyed 18-year-old girl who arrived on campus in 1984. It is also the beginning of my realization that life has taken me on many unexpected and amazing adventures since that day. It is the beginning of the rest of my life — a life defined by having one daughter in college and one on the way. A new normal.

So, while in many ways this may look like the proverbial last dance for both of us, I’m pretty sure we both have a few more moves in us. In fact, I can almost guarantee it.