Almost 18

Well, well. Here we are on the cusp of 18, blogging again.
Maybe we should make this an annual event?
It's been a good year, with exponential growth for the young-man-previously-known-as-Diver.
He's 10 days away from 18, with so many plates in the air that my head is spinning.  Last night, they started to slow him down.  After a heady afternoon - picking up his suit at the Men's Warehouse, then grimacing through trying it on for Mom and Dad, only to hear that it was badly altered and didn't fit well - frankly, he looked like a punch line in a comedy sketch about a hayseed in the city - then, returning to the Men's Warehouse to try to get it rectified, while I harangued corporate customer service about their appalling work -
I know this is the run-on sentence of the century, which just gives me a glimmer of what's going on his head.  So in three weeks, he's leaving high school - the small, intensely personal school where he has spent the last four years. Last weekend, he crammed in a state convention for law enforcement exploring, where he won a first in hostage negotiation.  His advisors have asked him to be chief next year. Then we were informed that he won second place in the stock market game in the entire midwest and will be honored at a luncheon next week.  He (along with me and his teachers) are scrambling to get him set for community college in the fall, an effort we should have started 9 months ago.  We're hosting a family reunion in two weeks involving 30 out of town family guests and multiple social events.  On June 5, he has two graduations; one at his small school and one at the high school in his home district.  Three days later, he leaves for 10 days in Israel on a Birthright Israel trip.  Then he's home for a week before going off to be on staff at his beloved Camp Kodiak. Then home for 10 days and he starts at a still-to-be-determined community college.
And this is a kid who doesn't like change.
Last night, after returning from his second trip to Men's Warehouse, he retired downstairs to do some "processing". At 9:30 he told me he was heading into the garage. He said yes, there was a lot going on but he didn't want to talk.  He was still sitting there in the dark at 10:30, when I urged him to get to bed as soon as he could.
This morning he did not go to school.  "Yes, I do have a lot going on and there's something else but I don't want to talk about it" he told me.  So I withdrew, and have stayed out of the way.  Which I think is what I need to do.  Because he is almost 18 and grown, and can and will work these things out on his own.  I'm backing off and writing about it here.