The school year is over. At least I think it is. There is no real ending. It's the strangest thing. I guess the ending is when my youngest goes to retrieve her things from her locker on the 29th and my oldest turns in her Chromebook.
What usually happens, is that I take the girl's pictures on the sidewalk before I send them off to school on the last day. Then I get a massage to reward myself for surviving another school year. I guess I can do that on the 29th, as some sort of weird, symbolic last day of school acknowledgment. It's been this way for so long. It's all I know.
This year is different in so many ways. The pandemic has just compounded the heaviness of it all. It is the ending of a lot of things for me. I will no longer have a child in the middle school anymore. I am not sad about this. I have had a child in middle school for the past 6 years. It is not my favorite stage of life, the middle school years. They are full of so many new and interesting challenges. They have been defined by hours spent in the car, and hormones, and so many trials as my children have transitioned from children into teenagers. It actually takes my breath away.
I now have two children in high school. My baby is going to be a freshman next year. I can't even believe it. My oldest will be a junior. This is the year before the last year. It is now starting to hit me how different my life will be. Soon.
On a normal year, I would have had more time to think about this. To celebrate many of our "lasts" and the milestones that go along with that but instead this time has just brought a weird cloud of uncertainty that trumped my anticipation of the things that are ahead.
My life in just a few short months will be different. Next school year, my youngest will be in high school. She's much more mature now and will be busy with school, friends and activities. My volunteer duties at the middle school will cease. Which is okay, it has been a huge part of my life since my children were very little but my time has come. My oldest will be living 3 hours away at residential high school (pandemic permitting) and I will not see her face every day.
She is very close to me and it will be hard. But it is GOOD. It is a wonderful opportunity and will allow her to grow into the woman she needs to become.
This is a time of transition. A part of me is really sad. It is hard for your kids to grow up. It leaves a hole. But I am going to fill that hole with my husband (no pun intended) and plan trips and find myself. My new self.
My identity has always been tied to being a mother. I've been a mom for most of my adult life and a lot of ways it's all I know. They are my entire world, my entire universe. They always will be and I will always be a mom but as I prepare to launch them in a few years to find their place in the world, it will also be time for me to find my place.
I need to figure out what I want to be when I grow up and restart some of the things I put on hold while I focused on raising children. This is an exciting prospect for me. I am so young and I feel like all the doors are opening up again. There is great hardship as your children become older but there is also great freedom and I am going to embrace that.
I have amazing kids and I think once they are adults they will be my very best friends. I just adore them, they are such great people. They make me laugh. Now that things are re-opening our house has re-opened. On Thursday night, me, my husband, my kids and 2 other teenagers sat at the dining room table and played Phase10 for hours. We were listening to 80s hits, eating snacks and laughing and enjoying the company. It was a nice time. I feel so fortunate that the girls want to hang out with us. We have built beautiful memories together. I always thank God I had them young because I get to know them my WHOLE life. What a blessing.
There was no ending to this whole period in my life, it will just slowly move into this next part. As my girls would say, it just be like that sometimes.
