Today is the first time I have ever watched one of my children get on a yellow school bus. When people were awed that I homeschooled four kids, I used to tell them homeschooling wasn’t much different than doing homework together.

I take that back.

It’s one thing to be a cog in the great machine of education; it’s another to be responsible for the entirety. I only realize that now, as I watch the bus pull away. With it goes a great weight I didn’t know was there.

Gabe is enrolled in almost all honors classes. His standardized tests put him in the top 97% year after year, so I feel pretty confident he’s where he belongs. Though he’s heard a few what-R-U?-nuts? over it. This is a theme in our family. This, U-nuts? 

Today I’m overwhelmed with nostalgia; I must lay down some words.

Months ago, I intended to post about how Gabe beat his Boston-Marathon-running dad in a 5K race. That’s an accomplishment in and of itself, but it gets better. Gabe hadn’t run any significant distance for six months prior. Zero training. He’s a swimmer, sure, so he has good lungs. But I worried he’d hurt himself. My husband wasn’t the least bit worried.

What-R-U?-nuts? hasn’t concerned any of my children. Katae graduated college at age 20. Tory is a marathoner. Luke’s off to Cornell on a full academic scholarship, and Gabe…

…used the strategy his dad taught him: choose a fast runner and stick with him, just a few yards behind. Let him pace you, and then at the end, turn it on. Gabe blew by his dad in the last quarter mile. Thanks, Dad.

How did Bob respond? By running an Olympic triathlon. Just kidding—only in that it was the response. The triathlon was a New Year’s Resolution. Bob bought a racing bike in February and began figuring it out. He learned all he could about triathlons.

Race day. Every time Bob mentioned it was his first triathlon, people asked, “Which distance?” He told them Olympic, and they gasped and looked at him like…U-nuts? After a few times of that, Bob began to wonder if he was, indeed, nuts.

Just before the race, a triathlete friend of Bob’s related how his son got into Harvard. The son was apprehensive, but his dad convinced him to reach crazy-high, like, U-nuts? high: Harvard and Stanford. You know what? The kid got into Harvard. Was he surprised? I’m betting yes.

A U-nuts? mentality doesn’t mean you don’t plan. Bob did his homework for the triathlon. He trained. At first, a few laps in the pool laid him low. But he kept at it and eventually could swim a mile without difficulty. He sought pointers from Gabe and other veteran swimmers and cyclists. The race was brutal, but he did it. And he got a time that pleased him, within his goal.

We all know the only regrets we have are the chances we don’t take and the mountains we’ve stared at wistfully but never climbed. The Harvard dad said something along the lines of nothing ventured… People bandy that phrase about, but we mostly don’t live it.

Live it, is what I’m thinking as Gabe goes to high school and Luke to Cornell. If people ask if you’re nuts, look at them like you’re Jack Nicolson from the Shining, just hacked his way through the hotel door. They’ll make way.

Today is the first day EVER that I have no child to teach. I guess this is the first day of the rest of my life. I’m already dreaming of things like scrubbing the kitchen floor and learning to cook like Gordon Ramsay.

And finish that second book and publish the first.

And I do get to teach other people’s kiddos, which I’m excited about. I have a class I teach to homeschooled students. Writing and reading. I show them ceilings are bull. They find college English easy in comparison. One has gone on to West Point—starting his second year, one to Germany for college and missionary training, several to Miami University. Lots to local and not-so-local colleges, doing great things. I feel nostalgic for them today. And proud.

Happy First Day of School, First Triathlon, & First Day of the Rest of My Life.