As is often the case, I feel like I blinked and in a fraction of a second another school year is just… gone.

When I was a kid and things felt as though they were dragging on, my mother used to assure me that time would go faster the older I got. At the time, it sounded ridiculous. After all, time can only go as fast as time goes, right?

Wrong.

Time seems to keep speeding up. There are no Pause buttons. Not enough rest breaks. The calendar turns over faster than we can X off the days, it seems. And now, after today, Grade 7 is over.

I don’t often drive F to school but I did on the last day, partly because it was intermittently down-pouring but also because I’d forgotten to make him a lunch and would have made him late otherwise. It’s not a long drive – about one kilometre – but it was slow moving as other parents dropped kids off and people made their way towards the bridge to Halifax. It gave us about 10 minutes of talk-time. And those 10 minutes? They were packed.

He shared that he really hadn’t felt prepared for how hard Grade 7 was. It was difficult for him to adjust to the higher expectations of his teachers and the new ways of learning, class changes, all while trying to figure out how to navigate the social sphere.

He told me it had been hard when he had a lot of projects due at once and that he felt it was especially challenging to bounce from one to another to try to get them all completed. I was able to share with him just how deeply I can relate – he basically described my average month as a freelancer!

His regret for the year was being separated from his friends when the class selections had been done, but he confessed that it had been nice to meet new people and make some friends (even if he really stuck to his old crew for the most part).

Finally, and most importantly, he expressed pride in how he tried to do his best even when he didn’t want to and told me that he was optimistic about his final marks.

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Grade 7 wasn’t without its bumps. As predicted (and as he’s supposed to), F made some poor choices that impacted his grades. Sometimes, he didn’t think things through. He half-assed some of his work and he hyper-obsessed on other projects.

As his mom, I can’t help but reflect on how much he changed this year.

He’s about half a foot taller, for starters, and somehow he grew up five years in just 10 months.

He seems both infinitely wiser and even more clueless than before in the way that only teenagers can.

His confidence has developed in an interesting but notable way, one that’s quieter but also more assured.

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F remarked that he thought the year went faster than previous school years, too, which brought me back to those long-ago conversations with my own mom. Time really does seem to go faster as we get older.

Or maybe we just appreciate the moments more.