This season has been such chaos, the end of it snuck up on my quickly.

Fall sports season is winding down, and with it, my second round of senior appreciation nights. A’s were difficult, coming so quickly on the heels of losing Steve, combined with the “beginning of the end” emotions, and just not knowing what to expect.

This time around, things are different.

For one thing, G is just a different kid. A was more than ready to move on from high school, and every milestone was one step closer to that goal. G seems to be just hitting his prime. Senior year seems to be something he is savoring, rather than just trying to get through. This in turn makes me have to reevaluate everything I thought I knew about how to get through senior year.

One of the projects on my plate is making a poster for the soccer team. When I made A’s, it was full of serious, intense, solitary moves, from the time he was little, right through his senior year. The pictures I’ve downloaded of G so far include him hamming it up on the sidelines, playing games balancing his water bottle on his ball and rolling around in the grass. Ones from this past year include him hamming it up with his friends, on and off the field. G is all about the ham.

As I organized the montage of wackiness, I realized that this will be our last hurrah on the soccer field. Both boys played as soon as they were old enough for rec league and finished out their senior season in high school. It’s been a constant in our lives, and in another week, it will be over. A continues to play on his house team at school, for fun, and G has indicated that he may follow a similar path, but for all intents and purposes, my years on the sidelines are over.

E still runs cross country, so I have another few years of chasing her around random fields and through the woods. Swimming will be the same; it’s definitely not G’s favorite sport, and E has a few more years ahead of her, so that won’t be as difficult to say goodbye to either.

Then, however, there is wrestling. I am already dreading G’s last day on the mat, because his first day on the mat was with Steve. I’ve written before how much my kids have gotten from wrestling, and it brings me a lot of joy knowing that those lessons will stay with them long after their time on the mat is finished, but it still doesn’t change the ending of the chapter.

For many years, every Sunday of our winter was spent in a smelly gym, with the boys rolling around on the mats, Steve pacing nervously between matches, then calling out directions while the match progressed. The hours and hours that we spent together at tournaments, the early morning weigh-ins followed by diner breakfasts, the kids passed out in the back of the car after a long day as we drove home, Steve recounting the highs and lows of not only our kids, but all of the other ones that he’s coached. Most of those kids have also graduated.

I know G is a little apprehensive about going into the season without his older mentors, but as I’ve seen with cross country season, he has started to realize that he is now stepping into their shoes as a team leader.

I guess a part of me is slightly more relaxed this time because I know what to expect, or at least I know I survived it all once, and I can do it again. Maybe I’m not that relaxed, but G’s attitude about the whole situation is contagious.

While I am glad that his year hasn’t been as stressful, so far, as A’s was, I also know that that stress helped propel A in the direction that he needed a push. I don’t think G necessarily needs that push; he’s motivated by other factors. I think I may have felt that I didn’t have to savor every last with A because I knew I would get a do-over with G. But now that time has come, and a lot of these lasts really will be lasts.

I’m also a little curious to see which path E goes down, whether she follows one of the boys, or she takes me on yet another wild, unexpected journey.

At the end of the day, regardless of the path he’s taken to get here, G is definitely ready to start moving on to the next step of his journey, and it’s starting to feel like my work here is almost done.

Liz Pinkey’s column appears on Saturdays in the Times News