Thinking about the major events that take place in one’s life, one that stands out to me is graduating from high school. The other is being a parent of a child graduating from high school. Perhaps a third is coming to the realization that you’re old enough to have a child graduating from high school. All three events took place for me and my family a couple of weeks ago.

Wow, what a busy time it was for all of us!

On Tuesday, my son attended his first prom (his prom was cancelled last year due to the pandemic). Due to some unusual automobile logistics, my wife and I had to shuttle him and his date to a party or two, then book it back to Boston just in time for a Paul McCartney concert at Fenway.

On Wednesday, there was an awards ceremony at which my son received an engineering award from his school.

Friday, we attended the graduation ceremony plus a few “after” parties.

And then for some real extracurricular activity, on Saturday while at another graduation party, he tested positive for COVID (which he likely contracted at the prom) and promptly had to quarantine in his bedroom for the next six days. I especially didn’t enjoy sending this text message to him: “Congrats on your accomplishments son, now go to your room for the week.” Ouch!

Thankfully, none of us had contracted COVID previously, but I’m assuming normally this would have been a fairly routine procedure, but not in our case. My 93 year old mother was visiting us from North Carolina and staying at our home. In an effort to be extra cautious, we all quarantined in different rooms, wore masks, avoided common areas, had meals outdoors and tested (negative!) every day.

This could have turned out to be a lot worse. Luckily, we were able change my mother’s itinerary to an earlier flight back to North Carolina on Monday morning. Other than my son, none of us caught COVID.

This major life event whirlwind will give us lots to talk about for many years to come.

thomas-fletcher
By Thomas Fletcher CFP® Chief Investment Officer Read More