I have this ritual, something I’ve done since Pono was in elementary school. Whenever I drop him off at school, I always stay and watch him walk off, until he’s out of sight. Disappearing through an archway, or into a school building, or around a corner, or into a clutch of friends (almost always girls).

Most parents dropping their kids off just… drop them off and drive off. Yes, there are the farewell rituals, fond or perfunctory, and everything in between. But… for the most part they immediately drive off. Me, I stay and watch the kid walk off, or drift off, or slouch off, or skip off. The variety of his walking, through the years, seared into my memory now, like ineradicable chemicals on indestructible photographic film.

This morning, I saw him pause and wait for friends (yes, girls) just alighting from the schoolbus. His hug and arm around them so distinctively him, so “aloha boy,” he has been that way since forever.

I note this now because this is coming to an end soon. And will be, for all time remaining afterwards, only in memory. But for now, for this morning, I repeat this ritual once again which, in its own way, is a meditation.