Mother's birthday makes for realization

Ah, a nice rain-soaked July day. Well, at least rain-soaked for the 15 minutes or so that I needed to be outside in transit places. Got to love how that works out, don't ya? So as I sit, soaked from the rainstorm and my umbrella's pathetic attempt to keep me dry, a realization comes over me. Today is July 22, my mom's birthday.\nFor the first time in my life, I am not there with my mom to celebrate her birthday. Now, before everyone out there labels me a bad son, please understand my absence on this day. Because of my employment situation, I was unable to get home for this weekend, which my mom understands and has no problem with. She and my dad will be coming here in a few weeks to celebrate it then. But the point is, it is different not being there, especially this year. For this year is the year my mom turns 50 (sorry mom, but I had to say it).\nOverall, this has not been the best year for my mom, between her turning 50 and my turning 21, but it is simply the facts of life that aging happens, and we all get older. Yet while I reveled my birthday, finally being legal and all, I approach this day with a bit more of sadness. After all, turning 50 is a big thing for any person out there, especially when that person holds a close place in your heart like my mom does with me.\nTo tell the truth, today my mom will be no different than yesterday, and when I see her she will look no different from when I saw her last, save some perhaps a change in haircut or something. Aging isn't really something that you notice when you see someone often. Unfortunately, despite the lack of everyday changes, there will be a difference. \nAs the years go by, and I get older along with my parents, our relationship shifts and changes. Up to this point, it's been good to me. They did a good job raising me, aside from typical high school angst that every teenager has against their parents, and now the relationship I hold with my parents is great. They are more friends to me than parents, people who I share drinking stories with over a good dinner, both from me and from them, the two reminiscing of college days of yore. To tell the truth, the stories originally caught me off-guard, trying to picture my parents as partyers like me and my friends are. But now that I have had a couple years to digest them, the stories are just something that has rounded my parents out more, something that makes me see them in a new light and appreciate them even more. \nYet I am a year from college graduation and getting to a big step in my life, perhaps the biggest step I will ever take. Living on my own, away from my parents. Oh sure, wherever they live will still be "home", even if they move from our house, but the times when we live together in the same home are soon to be over. They probably were over the minute I moved into my house here last August, actually. And it's a bit sad, because my parents will no longer be who I come home to after a bad day. Instead they will be people who I see every once in a while, getting together for a day, perhaps going to a game and dinner or something. While I know it doesn't sound different than now in college, it will be in a way that is hard to put into words. Things like this happen when you get older, it's just a fact of life, but it doesn't make it any easier. \nSo I go forward into my future, unbeknownst to me or anyone what I will be doing or where I will live. The only thing I do know is that my parents will be there to support me no matter what I do, even if I'm the place I call home is vastly different from the address they can be found at. After all, they are my parents, and that's what parents do. And someday, I hope to do as good a job with my children as they did with me.