This week I attended a meeting hosted by our local middle school's principal. Next year, my precious little girl will be headed to fifth grade. Middle school. Uh what? How the fuck did that happen? How did so many years pass by so quickly?
I sat in the school gymnasium surrounded by the other shell shocked parents. 'Do you need any volunteers? I'm used to being at school several times a week,' one mom asked. 'Do the middle schoolers AND high schoolers ride on the bus at the same time?', a worried looking father questioned. 'Are the eighth graders segregated from the younger kids?', a tired looking woman pleaded.
As I looked around, I had one thought. How the hell did I end up here? A parent with a child soon in double digits. A parent with a mortgage and a car payment (and oh yeah, I should say 'a divorced parent'.) I felt like a fraud sitting there. It was only yesterday when I was in middle school myself, worried about who I would sit with on the bus and who I would be paired up with in gym class. Are other parents feeling this way? Are they thinking how the hell did I end up here? How the hell did this happen?
Time passes by so quickly. In the blink of an eye. I'm going to treasure each and every moment of the journey now. Soon enough my own kids will be sitting as parents in a similar gymnasium looking around in a daze at the years that have flown by. Cherish every minute, I tell myself, and you can start....tomorrow. Right after you get through parent/teacher conferences tonight, make supper, put away the laundry, do the dishes, feed the dogs, read the kids a book, put them to bed and get ready to do it all over again the next day. Yes, tomorrow I'll start reveling in every moment, today I'm just trying to get through another day.
I have been having a few of those moments lately…where I realize that I am smiling with one of my kids. I think, "Thank you!"
ReplyDeleteI seem to have recovered from my knee surgeries enough not to drop dead each night into bed. For now, I am still a stay-at-home mom living in my house. The Ex has not pressured me to get a job or sell the house…but its coming. So I am trying to enjoy these "peaceful" moments (if you can call full-time parenting 3 kids on your own peaceful).
My daughter is going into fifth grade next year which is also considered middle school at our charter school. :(
I have asked her if she wants to homeschool (my oldest is homeschooling again), but she is not interested.
I just want to whisk all three of them away into a cabin in the woods and not miss a single moment! I have wasted way too much of our time together these past years focusing on a narcissistic asshole.
Glad to hear you've recovered from the surgeries! That must have been such a challenge. I hope your lives don't have to be disrupted anymore than they already have because of a narcissistic asshat. Thinking of you Michelle and know that you're definitely not alone in wanting to escape to that cabin in the woods!
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