My irises are blooming.

So what, you say? So I don’t have time to enjoy them right now, because this is crunch time. Students, you may have lots of papers and projects due, but guess what – we teachers now have lots of stuff to grade. I know, I know – that’s our problem now.

However, it means I have no time to stop and gaze at my beautiful purple irises, lining the white picket fence of my little house on K Street. I don’t have time to weed the lilies, admire the pink dogwood I planted last year, or ride bikes with my children, all the springtime activities I love.

This time of year is always bittersweet for me. I read the farewell columns in The Pacer and I burst with pride at what my students have accomplished and what I know they will do in their future lives in the “real world.” I sit at graduation and my heart twists, as any mother’s heart would, when members of my flock march across the stage, happily shedding their student existence and preparing to stretch their wings.

I am so happy for them, but I am so selfishly sad for me. At the end of my fourth year of teaching at UTM, the year I watched students I had nurtured since their freshman year accept their diplomas, I left graduation, went home, changed clothes, sat on my porch and cried like a baby. Maybe I’m just an idiot, but I really didn’t know until that moment how much of an impact all these young people have had on my life.

So this spring, again, I will attend graduation and applaud my students. I will hug them and wish them well, and hope they won’t forget the crazy woman who stayed up with them on Pacer nights.

Then I will go home and take a deep breath, sit on my porch, spend more time enjoying my own children as they so quickly laugh and grow away from me, and admire my pretty irises. And if I cry, just a little, no one will be the wiser.

Tomi McCutchen Parrish is the faculty adviser for The Pacer, business manager for The Spirit and generally known as “Mommy Tomi.”