Lower School is soon a wrap for Jack

Six years ago, we had the incredible fortune to enroll Jack in the PK class of a tremendous school. Tomorrow is his 4th grade graduation, and I am exceptionally proud of how much he has grown and what a fine young person he is. 

I am not one of those who feels it's flown by. These six years have felt, for the most part, like six years. Long at times, fleeting at others. Hard, happy, full of growth, full of challenge. Exciting, dull, calm, worrisome.

In short, life. Six years of it. 

Jack is a soulful, bright child. His inner light blazes, and it is a privilege to be his mother. 

Today, as I laid out his seersucker pants and dress shoes, readied his swim bag for the post-graduation party, and made his celebratory pie, I thought about how much Jack has taught me. Parenting is a humbling, constant, funny, improvisational, tiring unknown, and I have become a better person for the experience of motherhood.

I don't know that I feel sad about tomorrow as much as I feel it a bittersweet goodbye. I have deeply loved our experience at the Lower School. It has not been perfect, but nothing is, and in that respect, I'd say it's been pretty darn close. There is something very unique about a small campus of 4-11 year olds, and while I am grateful that many of us will head to the middle- and upper-school campus together this fall, I will miss being ensconced by innocence, youth and play. Thank goodness  Oliver has three years left at the Lower School.

Thank you, Jack, for being you, for growing into yourself in such wonderful, kind, gleaming, dazzling ways.

The same smooth path

Today, all day, I felt like a good mom. The boys listened. We laughed. No one lost it. Homework was a breeze. Dinner was easy.

The machine was well-oiled and ran thus.

I believe that I am a good mother, but that conviction is sometimes harder to both feel and experience than it is to know. Take, for instance, the times another person praises your child for his manners, her leadership, his kindness, her creative spirit. In those moments, you see your child as others do rather than through the many possible lenses that day or week has placed in front of your eyes: ungrateful or authoritarian behavior, obstinance, yet another unapproved "science experiment" that's laid waste to your kitchen.

When you're battling over inane crap like toothpaste and pancakes and mediating sibling bicker fests about the number of raspberries per plate or the correct name of the Plus Plus toy; when you scream despite your best efforts or because you simply need to be heard...it can be hard to pat yourself on the back and believe in your maternal goodness. 

But on some days, the stars align and you find yourselves all walking the same smooth path together, hand in hand. 

And it's as lovely and simple and satisfying as you imagine it could be. Should be. Perhaps wish it were more often. Maybe will be tomorrow too.

For now, I'm staying present, stewing in the thick deliciousness of watching their crawls come along at swimming lessons and them dance their way to the parking lot afterwards. Of treating them to a surprise trip to the bookstore and beaming as they picked out one small book each, thoughtfully and gratefully. Of hugging them close when they thanked me so sincerely for the new books and being their mom.

Days like today can seem like sparkling bits of heavenly ephemera, but boy can they fill a mom's bucket.

A swarm

I just scrubbed my table clean, which sounds much simpler than it was. Coated in pesto, blueberry muffin crumbs, salsa and all manner of grubby finger and food residue, wiping it down took some real elbow grease. As I sponged the kids’ side, I looked down onto their chairs and saw more crumbs, noodles now hard as crackers and blueberries mashed so deeply into the fabric that they’re now part of it. I sighed.

I got out the dust-buster, which is on its last leg. I glanced at the cardboard box-now-a-muffin-cart that Oliver made over the weekend. I saw a rumpled Harry Potter cloak infused with cat hair wadded up in the corner of the room, and two half-completed Blow Your Mind science kits waiting for what? To be finished? Hilarious.

I came across receipts and expired coupons and twigs and dust bunnies, a half-written birthday card that’s now more than belated, a blanket that smells of dog. A friend was to come for a visit and some tea, but she’s stuck at home with a diarrheic toddler; she is at the end of her rope, and I understand because I wondered this morning, as I dropped the boys at the camp bus, if ever I’d been so glad to do so.

Fruit flies are swarming my kitchen. I thought Tom and the boys would have eaten the last of the peaches while I was away, but like all fruits and vegetables I left for them, the peaches were ignored, and in the soft spots and thin seams where the skin just splits, fruit flies found a feast. I do not hate fruit flies like I do the mosquitos that make it a brave act to go putter in my back yard this time of year, but they are annoying. Like inside gnats from which you cannot escape.

It’s pea soup outside today, and I am glad I have nowhere to be.

Yesterday was my annual physical and a last-minute thyroid ultrasound because one lobe felt swollen. It’s fine, and I have a new medicine because I am a chronic underperformer in the T3 department. My internist said I was such a grounded, well-adjusted person. 
Yesterday I took a run, unpacked and showered.
Yesterday I started packing again, as we leave on Saturday.
Yesterday I made blueberry muffins, those that later caked my table and chair and car, because Jack adores them and I didn’t have time to refill our freezer stash before I left.
Yesterday I made a beautiful dinner for the boys and later one for T and myself. Yesterday T and I stayed up watching Bill Maher’s show from Friday and laughing ourselves silly and enjoying another glass of wine together.

This morning we were tired, and the boys were just awful. Awful and annoying, like those fruit flies and mosquitoes all wrapped into one mean swarm. My heart was sad during our drive, and I told them in no uncertain terms that should they consider acting like this in England, I would absolutely get a babysitter and leave them at home all the damn day long. I was not joking.

We talked about insincere apologies and how hurtful and damaging they can be. We talked about hoarding and why I didn't want Oliver to keep the half a lizard he found in Louisiana last month that was rotting in a jar and stinking so badly that I threw it out without asking him. He pleaded with me to take the old, broken pretzel out of the garbage can. And the expired coupons too. I do not understand. I did not expect these conversations.

When I try so hard and my kids hurt my heart, I feel blindsided. Every single time. That’s the thing about kids growing up. They can start to disappoint you in a way babies can’t. They can start to choose to upset you. And really, in that volition and decision-making is celebration of their burgeoning independence but also challenge like you’ve never seen before.

It’s a gnatty vortex. Sometimes you want to give it space and appreciation, but at other times, you just want to swat the shit out of it. You want it to be a round nail in a round hole that you can push flat and quiet and seamless against the wall.