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Community Corner

Carpool Candy: Last Day Blues

Another year done makes me glum.

These past few weeks have felt like a whirlwind of parties and endings as school and sports seasons wrap up. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I am feeling more melancholy about the end of the school year than my kids. It's not because they will now be home for two weeks until camp starts (although that many consecutive days with three boys and no structure is extremely daunting). It's because every last day party reminds me that the kids are growing up.

Jacob, my oldest, is ten and already acts like a preteen so there's no denying his age. He's also my first child so every new phase is still exciting to watch. It's seeing my younger boys reaching mini milestones that gives me pause.  

I recently dropped by Marshall School to attend a class party for my seven-year-old, Aden. As the kids sucked on watermelon and crunched their cookies, I realized he's never going to be in first grade again. I'm not even sure why that makes me wistful. Perhaps it's the beginning of the end of his innocence. Maybe it's that I saw from my classroom visit that he has a whole other life he manages without me. Beyond academics, there are rules to follow and social politics to navigate. He experiences all of that without any help from me.    

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Aden's face has thinned out this year and he's getting more of a strut to his walk as he grows taller and more confident. Luckily, he still occasionally holds my hand but I know that won't last long. The days of hugging me goodbye before getting on that cute yellow school bus are numbered. In just one more year, he'll be walking to Jefferson and becoming more focused on his friends than family. Our reading time at night will change as he prefers to read his own books over me reading to him.

Thank goodness for my four-year-old, Eli. I can bear Aden maturing because I know I still have another little guy to go. He had his last day party at preschool this week. There was singing, a slide show, and the teacher was literally in tears as she hugged the kids goodbye. She gave each child a giant bag filled with completed projects and mementos of the year as she sent them on their way. My unflappable son walked out of the classroom like it was any other day.

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I'd like to think it's because he just can't wrap his brain around the idea of not returning to that familiar space. And maybe because he knows he'll be there in a different class next year. He marched out with a smile on his face and I followed him with a lump in my throat. 

Why are these silly little endings so difficult? Perhaps it's that the kids are getting older and I'm still yearning for the simpler times when they were babies. Or maybe it makes me feel old to have older children.

The most common cliché I hear as a parent is "it goes by so fast." I always kind of resented that notion. It goes by fast if you don't stop to appreciate the every-day moments, and I always try to smell the roses whenever I can.

But now that my kids are getting older, I understand the adage in a broader sense. Whether you're working or at home with your kids, going through each of those marathon days—of  planning, preparing, schlepping, feeding, cheering, scolding, forgetting, remembering, cajoling—seems to drag on forever. So the idea of time flying by quickly seems ridiculous, and almost insulting. I'm living these days, and they are long and hard.

Yet here I am, tearing up as I bid farewell to another year and realize there are no do-overs. Life keeps moving forward. Kids keep growing up and there's nothing I can do to slow it down. When you think about it that way, it is going too quickly. Suddenly, end-of-the-year juice boxes and pretzels are making me philosophize about the passage of time.

But I can't think about that now—I'll think about that tomorrow. Today, I still have hands to hold and stories to read to my little boys and I'm going to savor every bit.

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