I always feel a little disoriented at the end of a school year -- a little blue, even. This year, the end-of-the-year blues struck harder than usual, possibly because this year I actually was not counting down the minutes until the end. Last year, I think I started my “How many more Sunday nights are left” calculations sometime in March, if not the beginning of second semester. This year was markedly different in so many ways, not the least of which is that I loved all of my classes and didn’t spend approximately one night per week crying to Matt that we had to figure out some way for me to quit my job. Last year, I couldn’t get away fast enough. This year, I’m spending my first week of summer teaching a morning IB credit retrieval course for students who need a little extra help, and I’ve appreciated the fact that it’s easing me away from school a little more gently.
But I do love summer. I love the slowness of everything, the long shadows across the sidewalks when I go running in the evenings, the way the light catches the leaves along the streets near my home. I love picnics with my kiddos, afternoons spent in the backyard or at the splash park, the way they come home smelling like chlorine and sunscreen with their hair stuck to their sweaty foreheads. I love summer reading lists, the anticipation of the road trips we’ll take, keeping my toenails painted, and the sound of the fan in our bedroom at night.
We have all kinds of plans this summer: first, we’re tearing out our old, rotting deck and replacing it with a patio. I’m looking forward to not slapping a coat of stain on those old boards every year, and it will be lovely not to worry about, say, my three-year-old or one of the neighbor boys falling through one of the holes when they’re tearing around the yard. We grilled veggie burgers and ate outside tonight, and I had to say, “No, no -- don’t jump there!” half a dozen times.
Next weekend, the kids and I are road-tripping to Bozeman with my friend Kyanne. It’ll be like bringing home friends during breaks in college, except with car seats and children in the back. Later in July, one of my oldest friends is getting married in Glacier National Park, which is my favorite place in the world, and we’re definitely going to that. And in August, the Winslows are flying to Minnesota for a week or so. This is a good summer line-up. And in between these trips there will be gymnastics (for both kids), and swimming lessons, and picnics and running through the sprinkler and trying to coax our little garden to produce tomatoes and peas and herbs.
I’m also taking a writing workshop all summer. It started last weekend, and I can already tell it’s going to be really, really good and necessary for me. I always make ambitious writing goals during the summer, but since I’ve had children I haven’t been great about letting it out of the pages of my notebook. So I am doing this thing, finally.
In other news, I have a second-grader now.
And this is probably why the end of the year felt even more disorienting to me this year. I have this kid, this lovely little girl who is so aware of her second-gradeness. Two years ago I was pretty much constantly on the verge of barfing all the time, I was so nervous about her starting school -- and now here she is, seven years old, running around with all of these kids on the playground, deeply involved in all of these games that are totally separate from me, bringing home portfolios full of this gorgeous writing and art that burst forth from her own mind with no prompting or assistance from me. It is a beautiful, wonderful thing, but it leaves me spinning. Out of nowhere not long ago she said, “When I’m in twelfth grade, I’ll be seventeen.” And I was all, “Um, that’s...true, but maybe let’s just enjoy first grade for today?” Because what?
It has been a month of birthdays and birthday parties, of her Show Week at The Little Gym, the culmination of a year’s worth of gymnastics. It has been a month of first-grade concerts and end-of-the-year celebrations. Isaac, not to be left out of all the excitement, decided to poop in the potty this week. (Little Dude has been peeing in the potty since last fall -- we don’t even give him treats every time he goes anymore! -- but he staunchly refuses to poop there, preferring instead to hold it until he falls asleep at night, and aren’t you glad you’re reading this?) And on top of that, my seniors went and graduated on me, and one of my best friends is moving to China in a month, which meant that I did some hard, ugly crying in her classroom the last week of school. It is all just entirely too much, and it probably explains why I collapsed fully-clothed on our bed at eight o’clock the other night, fully intending to get up five minutes later and wash Suzannah’s hair before bed. What actually happened is that I fell asleep, dimly aware of Matt closing the bedroom door and saying, “Let’s let Mommy sleep, okay?” I woke up terribly confused at 9:30, and Matt was like, “You know, you could just go to bed for real,” and I was all, “Now?” Because that hasn’t happened since about 2005. But it sounded like a blessedly good idea. And it was.
No comments:
Post a Comment