Tail End

N: ...blahblah...last three weeks of summer vacation.
H: Three weeks!?! But I want to go back to school now!

I reported that conversation to office manager at the kids' school and she informed me that school cannot start until she's done with her paperwork--so Hannah's now offered to go in and help with paperwork. She really wants to get back to school.

j (from the backseat of the car): I just read something without trying to!
N: Wow, that's awesome! That means you're really getting to be a great reader.
j: But.... I don't want to know how to read.

I don't quite know how to convey how devastated he sounded.

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My summer home renovation project is nearing completion. That's another post though.

Back

I just noticed: all of August I only posted here once. I don't know that I can say very well why that is (well, aside from laziness). I've a list right here next to me of things to blog about. Who cares, really, if they all happened last month (or, uh, the month before that)?

I sat down last night and turned the TV on and realized I haven't sat down and turned the TV on in the evening in well over a week. It's been perpetual motion around here. Everyone's back in school, and suddenly we've got soccer practice twice a week. We had a terrific and lovely visit over Labor Day weekend with dear, dear friends; I found myself part of a project with a very short deadline; the washer of my dreams was delivered to my back porch and I've been washing everything in sight. Plenty to keep me busy and make me forget to take some time for myself, sit in front of the TV, read one of the books from the ever-growing stack on my bedside table, post to my blog.
I'm keen on keeping my feet planted firmly on the ground and I don't dream of being in another place, but I do crave solitude, quiet enough around me that I can listen to and feed the ideas that tickle me and time to linger in thought so deep I find it hard to be roused. The act of mothering is one that demands absolute presence; it's at odds with the way I usually want to be.

It's easy for me to shrug away from that kind of tension by making excuses as I complain, by pointing out that between the exuberance and frustrations of raising my children, there's no room for anything else. Harder is to face the lack of balance head-on; when I do, I start to feel like I am seeking out the very thing I'd like to avoid. I get crankier because thoughts won't stay put, I have to set down the book I'm reading mid-chapter, I snap at my children to give me just one minute.

Could it be that I should embrace the tension instead? Not push against it, but let it stretch me? See where that leads?

Time Enough

Because so many people asked me so nicely, I took pictures at Hannah's school's 8th grade graduation last night. There were 10 graduates, all of them handsome, interesting kids. I took lots and lots of pictures: individual portraits, shots of families, candid shots while everyone was getting ready, group shots and then pictures during the ceremony. (Next year I'm making myself a press pass that says National Geographic on it so the local "newspaper" photographer will stay out of my way.)

I'm a sucker for pomp, for circumstance, for rites of passage anyway, but last night's ceremony was particularly sweet and wonderful. It didn't feel at all like a sudden, final spurt of sentimentality and goodwill and best wishes the way this type of ceremony often does. Rather, it was a clear expression of how nurturing this school is, how every student is taken seriously, how tight-knit and close the community is--not just on the last day of school, not just right before a crop of kids are sent off to high school and the great big world beyond, but every single day. It's no surprise that everyone knows everyone else and that they've all grown close over the years; this is a very small school in a tiny little town. What's striking is the teachers and parents wanting something and working together to attain it, the students responding by involving themselves in making the school what it is.

I've had a bittersweet feeling at the top of my throat all day long. It's Hannah's last day of Kindergarten and like her teacher--who waved me off with an "Oh no, please don't make me cry" when I thanked her for a great year--I'm one gulp away from tears. Sifting through the 608 pictures I took last night isn't helping much. In a few short years, that'll be Hannah and her friends all dressed up, laughing, nervous, excited, that'll be John and I and the other parents swelling with pride, still wondering where the time has gone.