After listening to the presidential candidates and the news media for the past two years, I am greatly relieved that this presidential race is behind us. The media can now turn their attention to whom President-elect Obama will select to serve in his cabinet and what we can expect during his first few months in office.

Why do they speculate, and why do we listen? Perhaps you do not listen. If you do not, you are not missing a thing. I have already heard news radio political commentators discuss a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012. Are they kidding me? Have they nothing else to talk about? Is there no other news to report? Can we get a break here, please?

The question of the presidential candidates in 2012 caused me to stop and ponder, but not about our forthcoming presidential election. The thought provoked me to mentally step into the year 2012 as it specifically relates to my family.

My 12-year-old son, Alex, will be 16 years old. He will be a newly licensed automobile driver. He will be a high school junior. He will be taller than I am. In fact, I might even have started to shrink by then. Alex will have so much more independence than he has now. I am sure if I mentioned this to him, he would tell me that I am so strict now he is certain that I will never let him out of the house when he is 16 years old.

He will have a summer job, I hope, and will most likely be coming and going to that job, which I hope will be within walking distance, since I was not planning on buying him his own car.

He will be turning his attention toward the SATs. Perhaps he will have a girlfriend; Wait, disregard the girlfriend comment. No girlfriend. Perhaps he will play high school football. It is overwhelming that in just four years my son will be closer to being a man than being a child.

It then occurred to me that if President Obama gets elected for a second term, Alex will be 20 years old at the end of Obama's presidency. My son will be able to vote in his first presidential election. He will also be a college student. He will no longer be living at home, except for summers. That makes me sad.

I am not ready for my son to be away at college and not living with me anymore. When Alex was very little, he asked me if he could live with his dad and me when he had a wife and children. He was very young, and I thought it was a very sweet question. I told him that he could always live with us.

I don't normally think this far ahead. Years ago, during job interviews, the interviewers would typically ask me what my professional aspirations were in five or 10 years. I used to come up with some kind of snappy repartee that sounded utterly ridiculous. Years later, after I had become a mother, I was asked that same question during a job interview. I told them I was not certain what I would be doing in five to 10 years, but whatever it was, I would give it my all. To myself I thought, I just wanted to make it through the day with no scraped knees, no temper tantrums -- Alex's or mine -- no monsters in the closet, and dinner on the table that included a vegetable.

As if this was not upsetting enough, I then came to the stark realization that my stepson, Josh, will be 40 years old. I shared this revelation with my husband as it related to the next two presidential elections. John then told me how old he and I will be in eight years. I will be how old???

That cannot be right. This daydream has turned in to a full-blown nightmare. My son is no longer living at home with me, my stepson is middle-aged, my dog has most likely passed to the great beyond, and I'm sure the lizard has not. My husband is old enough to think about retiring, and I am, well, I am middle-aged and we will leave it at that.

Should Josh decide to have children, I will be a grandmother. I can't take it anymore; this is too much for me. I am not ready for my son to be 16 years old and cannot bear to think about him being away at college. Fortunately for now, I do not have to. I can turn my attention back to the present and rejoice in the many magical moments my son will bring to me and to his father between now and the next presidential election. And with that, I'm going to find my son and be grateful that he is just 12 years old.

Share your own snappy repartee with Michelle Potocko at theconsciousmother@gmail.com.

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