Youngest son just left. Slipped his newly ironed, bright red graduation robe into the back seat of his little red car, and headed off to his last high school function.

In just a few minutes, we will follow.

But before he left, after taking a shower, tying his long red hair into a ponytail, dressing in black pants, black t-shirt and sunglasses, and swiping his brother's boombox, he checked the mail.

Mail I had brought home just a few hours earlier with the heelers. I had noticed the legal-sized envelope addressed to him, in a childish print. The return address was the local Middle School, just down the street from the high school.

I thought that a little unusual, but the wife figured it was just a standard thank-you letter, from one of the kids he had been tutoring in music at his old alma mater. Like the envelope stuffed full of thank you letters that I received this week for my PowerPoint presentation.

We were wrong.

Youngest son recognized the handwriting immediately.

It was his own.

There was a pause, and then the Eureka light reached his face.

"It's a letter," he said, "that I wrote to myself. Back in the 8th grade."

Back when he and his friends were being promoted, preparing for that great, scary adventure known as "High School," one of their teachers had them write letters to themselves. To be delivered at their next graduation.

Today.

And here it arrived, just in time.

Cool.

He didn't bother opening it, although I had to take it from his mother's hands to keep her from doing the same. I guess he already knows what it says. But he left with a smile and, I think, a sense of continuity with his past.

And now, we need to do the same.