Last Week

No, this is not a retrospective of last week. Nor is this my last work week. It is, however, the last week of the school year, a week that felt impossibly far away for so long that it's almost impossible to believe it is now upon us.

In the weeks leading up to this one, just about every drop of household discipline has evaporated, from piano practice to regular reading to any sort of consistent meal or bed time. I guess perhaps the summer vacation of the mind started a few weeks ago.

Yet, despite the fact that all of this should have left me well prepared for this last week, I woke up today with a kind of melancholy about it all. When this school year began, I was an out of work/freelancing mom who met school buses, went to school events, even did round trip transportation and carpooling during the school bus strike. Now as it is ending, I am very much the working mom that I was for years, now with a commute that makes attending school events, well, challenging. Making me feel as though I somehow completely missed the back half of the year. Somehow, my kids went from new situations to a new status quo, I guess while I was on trains.

Years ago, when my kids were babies, a friend told me that once they hit "real school," things would go unbelievably fast, and this year has certainly demonstrated that. As we "got through" one project or test after another, we also "got through" a whole year. For, you see, time doesn't care that you are on the train. It doesn't care that your energy is going into a new job or new responsibilities. It just moves, and with it moves a whole school year.

I am sure that when we (well, at least some of us) stop having to get up and out early and stop having homework and practice and racing from here to there, we will all appreciate the arrival of summer vacation. But, for now, I am saving snapshots in my head of this last week. Nine months ago, we were starting so many things that were new, and in two days, those new things will be over. But I will hold on to both the new and the over. Until we start new once again.