The Times They Are A'Changin'

"Come gather 'round people, where ever you roam....."

Yep, that's what it feels like here these days as we approach the Winter Solstice, which for my family is our midwinter holiday.

It's always somewhat of a hassle seeing as my university semester frequently ends less than a week before the solstice.  In fact, there have been years when graduation was as late as the 23rd of December.  Fortunately, I never have to be involved with graduation, so that's a relief.  My official duties regularly end two days prior to graduation.

When the kids were littles, we had a lot more active traditions involving the sun, the science of the sun, the mythology of the sun, and all that jazz.  But by now, our observances have mostly turned into the secularized version of the secular Christmas.  Generally, we have a "feast" on solstice eve or the evening of the longest night.  Typically the food represents dark and light in one way or another (chocolate cake vs. pumpkin pie, beef stew w/sun dried tomatoes, sun flower encrusted bread) and pomegranate (based on the amount of pomegranate seeds my family can consume, the earth will never grow any living thing again and we are all destined to spend eternity in the underworld--which, according to many of our Christian fundamentalist friends is only half wrong).   Then the kids and husband go to bed, and I spend the wee hours of the morning wrapping gifts.  The next morning (when they were young we'd force march them out of bed and force them to watch the sun rise...as soon as they could see it, they'd run off to open gifts...after all they had to see if they had done a good enough job the previous night using noise makers to remind the sun where to return) we'd open gifts.  One year, I even bundled them all into our old station wagon, drove waaaaay out into the country here in desolate, flat NW Ohio, and forced them to watch the sun come up over the flat horizon.  After gifts, we eat a yummy breakfast and spend the day doing nothing but enjoying each other and the new gifts.

In all, this works out well as a practice as that means we get to mostly ignore Christmas Day (we have a tradition of going to the grandmother's house Christmas Eve), so that's another day to just do nothing and be together until time to meander over to the grandmother's house for Christmas Dinner and movies.  I grew up in a tradition of not travelling on Christmas Eve or Day because my father was a minister and my mother found it rough enough (she used to say on us kids, but now as the mother myself I think it was rougher on her) to deal with the stress the services put on my father (one or two Christmas Eve and two Christmas Day, except in the years it fell on a Sunday, in which case there were three services) and unfair to yank us kids away from gifts to travel in the car to visit relatives.  So, once my brother and I started having kids, our families would get together on the first weekend after Christmas that he had custody of his boys.  That worked well.  It's just a day, you know?  It's the family gathering that is important.

Anyway, times are changing.

As I just stated, it's just a day.  At times in the past, we have had to fudge the solstice a little here and there...do our day early or a little late, depending on when my husband could get a day off.  As long as he could be home by sundown on the "eve" we were good and then have the next day off.  In general, when we worked at the big box university, that wasn't a problem.  Then for the last two years, he wasn't working, and that wasn't a problem.

Now he is working again, and working in very traditional retail.  He just started his job this fall, so didn't feel like he should request a day off so soon.  Also, commission is involved and it makes no sense to NOT sell during one of the busiest weeks of the year.  Fortunately this year, he has the first day of winter off.

And so does The Eldest.

Pell Grant, ultimately, when that refund check will come later in the semester).  All he has to do is keep higher than a 3.0 GPA (and if he applies for a book scholarship in time this year that should be taken care of, too).  But I digress...

He is not in a position to ask for time off work to do Solstice with his family.  I get that having worked similar jobs and having been married to a man who has had jobs without paid time off--and depressingly, at this late stage of the game, he's back to that.  The Eldest has Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off--without pay of course.  Initially, I thought that now, with girl friends in the picture, the older two boys would be able to benefit from our Solstice observances.  Get their family obligations out of the way and that opens up time to devote to the girl friend on the more popular holiday.

But with the convoluted work schedules in our lives now...and my medical appointments...well, let's face it, no one else in the world cares that Thursday is our holiday.  The Middle has a baby sitting gig on The First Day of Winter.  I have Occupational Therapy at noon that day.  The Eldest has to work the night before "until close" which can mean whatever he wants it to me...I have no clue.  Plus, he didn't sound too enthusiastic about spending the night here so we could open gifts and sunrise.  And what The Middle said about sunrise is probably illegal to print in several more conservative states.  However, it must be done.  Maybe not sunrise, but morning.  Adult morning, not teen morning.  By 11 am we all have to be dressed and out of the house and sitting nicely in a local dining establishment to have the annual "lunch with the out of town Aunt" which is a favorite...again, compounded by the need this year of the grandmother to have a constant companion due to her frail health and stroke last summer.  Thursday is one day it works, so Thursday it is.  I'll have to leave the lunch early (if I even get to eat) to make it to my appointment.  The Middle will have to fly off to babysit.  So much for a leisurely day chilling as a family.

Now, I'm thinking that maybe we should move our gift opening to Xmas Eve next year to simplify things.  Why Xmas Eve?  We've now entered that phase where sooner rather than later, my boys will partner off.  I'm guessing at least one or more of them will spawn their own offspring (a couple of them talk about it...although those talks tend to include babies left in baskets on my doorstep and twins named Titian and Sophocles and adopting a baby from that Kenyon tribe that produces such fast runners so that one person in the family is athletic...they will mature, I hope), and I really do want to believe that I can be as gracious as my mother was in allowing the spin-off family units to develop their own holiday traditions.  Or maybe we should do Xmas day so until then the boys can be certain to be "free" on the Eve to spend time with girl friends.

I just don't know.  What I do know is I really didn't see this coming last year or I would have made more of an effort to drive home our traditions.

So, this year, the Feral Third, who has very little memory of the traditions that we had when he was little (because there is no way in hell after a certain age the older two were going to go outside and bang noise makers to tell the sun where to come back or engage in dancing to Celtic music in the dark in the house...i tell him he did these things and maybe, just maybe in that two gallon bag of undeveloped film there is evidence), is starting a new tradition.  A weird open house here on The Longest Night.  We've invited friends over to a soup and finger food pot luck and game playing, no electric lights other than decorations.  I can light with candles but from the years of lighting 365 tea lights on Solstice, I know that drives up the heat index.  And we don't have a lot of safe surfaces for candles (I'm more concerned about wax spilling on my floors than burning the house down, to be honest) and there will be young children here, so we will be using batter powered lights for the most part...it's the thought that counts.

Not too long after guests leave, The Eldest should come home from work, although my guess is he'll want to go back to his house, shower, etc. and then have me pick him up (seeing as I was posting to my facebook wall at 4:00 a.m. I'm thinking that his schedule is a little twisted these days).  The Man of the House should get home as guests start to arrive.  Truthfully, the Feral Third was sure no one would want to come.  So we invited a lot of guests.  I think it's going to be quite crowded in our little house (especially since only 3.5 rooms are usable entertainment space (no one can function in my husband's office--I don't know how he functions in there).  The rest of the house is great for family living, but  not so much for entertaining formally.  It's great to hold teens and tweens in the back family room, but other spaces are limited.  Good thing we like people.

Ultimately, what our observances will change to, is yet unknown.  After all, at one point in time, we shopped for family tree ornaments on December 3rd, the anniversary of our first son, born still.  That has since moved to "whenever it gets done" to "OMG, don't we have enough ornaments" to this year we are cramming it in to the last hour the store is open tonight because we can all be there, whether people want to go or not.  Again, this is very important to The Feral Third.  The other boys haven't mentioned it at all.  They.  Will. Do. It. Graciously. Or. Die.

So, times are changing.  This change has taken my by surprise.  It might be the first time I've felt nostalgic for the kids' youths.  I'm more the "wow, this new stage is great and so much nicer than before" kind of mom.  I love my kids' independence.  I was happier than The Eldest, I think, when he moved out and then left for a 9 week trip the next day.  I was one of the only moms with dry eyes as their buses pulled away.

But this, but at this point, it's time to heed the words of the bard:

Come mothers and fathersThroughout the landAnd don't criticizeWhat you can't understandYour sons and your daughtersAre beyond your commandYour old road isRapidly agin'Please get out of the new oneIf you can't lend your handFor the times they are a-changin'.

It's so much better in my memory

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was a (much) younger mother of two sons with a husband who worked two jobs.  I, also, worked two jobs.  I had the same job I have now, only part time, and I babysat for two other little boys, who were, age-wise, on either side of my then youngest child.

In my memory, those were sweet days.  I remember giving in gracefully and subsisting on "kid" food.  I didn't even bother trying to make adult-like food or meals.  I'd get up at 5:00 a.m. to tidy and sweep before the one child care kid was dropped off at 5:45 because my boys didn't go to sleep until after 11:00 p.m. and their father had left for his third shift job so that they could spend time with him.  I certainly wasn't going to tidy up at midnight, after nursing the toddler down to sleep.

I remember long winter nights, our house chilly because we were trying to spend as little as possible, snuggled in bed with the the boys...on the futon in the office because daddy was sleeping in the "adult" bed in the other room...reading book after book after book.....yep, we had no TV.  I read so many picture books and chapter books out loud, just to keep the kids separated, quiet, not fussing.  I suppose at some point, I must have graded essays and planned classes, met with students, and all that jazz....of that I have no memory.  I just remember being with young children nearly 24/7.

Until this week, those times were so sweet...in my memory.

However, this week, my husband has been working late, getting home at nearly 11:00 p.m.  He now has his own projects going, so he spends his mornings working on them.  Our kids are older, too, so this weekend, during the hours he was home, they were asleep.  He was out the door by 10:00 am this morning.  11:00 am yesterday.  And he left shortly before they got out of school on Friday.

The kids don't demand the constant attention that they did back in the day.  In fact, although I'm home alone with two boys right now (only one of which was born in the days of sweet memories...the other came along later and one of the boys from the time of sweetness has since moved out and lives on his own), they are rarely in the same room with me.  One is upstairs studying for finals.  One is killing zombies online in the family room.

But my goodness, today has been so LONG.  Getting these boys to accomplish what I need or want them to accomplish (housework, schoolwork, holiday planning, etc.) is making me remember just how stressful those "sweet" times were.  I think I'm having PTSD flashbacks or something.

Here is sit.  It's totally dark out.  It feels like we should be winding down for bed, but it's really not even 7:00 p.m.  There are hours and hours to go before I sleep.  I have not been a nice mother today.  I just wanted everything done in a timely and smooth manner.  How could I have forgotten that no one in my family but me values timeliness and smoothness?

Hopefully those sweet memories will come back when this time also has passed.

Because I sort of miss them.  I was much happier in my memories than I think I was during that reality.  Hopefully, we'll all create fake memories about the current time which will place us in a happy context because the memories I'm sure I created for these two boys today were certainly not happy.

Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Wow.  It has certainly been a long time since I've written anything.  It's not that I don't think about blog posts.  I have many good intentions; I have many ideas for posts and notes jotted down; however, I have moved my laptop from the couch to the table.  This is both good and bad.  It's good in that I'm less likely to get sucked into watching tv and hanging out online.  It's bad in that I don't hang out watching tv and hanging out online.  This change in location also means that I'm more apt to do "drive by updates" on facebook, but less likely to sit down long enough to compose something thoughtful.  I've read enough blogs to realize that the self-indulgent, thoughtless blogger is worse than no blogger.  Hence, my silence.

However, today was such a nice day that I'm compelled to share it with you.  Actually, the day had nothing to do with me.  It was a beautiful day for my youngest son, aka The Feral Third.

TFT has had a rough month or so.  You see, his soccer team merged with a team from another club and there will now be enough kids to have two teams.  Sadly, TFT did not make the A team.  Even sadder, all of his buddies did make the A team.  This has been very upsetting and devastating for him as you might imagine.  No matter what spin we put on it, he knows that he is going to be playing weaker teams, in a weaker division, not going to tournaments, and will not have the prestigious coach.  He also believes this marks the beginning of the end of his soccer career and he foresees playing JV in high school while his buddies all play varsity.  Yes, we adults know he's waaaaay over analyzing this all, but reality is that he is over analyzing this and this is his life right now.  He totally feels slighted, insulted, and demeaned.

Yes, we've all been there, done that and lived to tell the tale.  He just has a lot of emotional energy to put into this tale these days (weeks?  this has dragged on and on).

Anyway, to make what has been a miserable month shorter for the sake of the rest of you (no one else should have to live my misery and believe me, I've shared it enough already with others), he has felt overlooked by his friends who, being on the A team, do some sort of running club or something.  He was invited once and didn't go because we got off to a slow start (no pun intended) that morning, but he clearly feels that if he were wanted there, he'd have been in on it from the beginning and then he found out that they also play soccer afterward and, again, he wasn't "in on it".  He was an after thought.

Again, play me a violin....

So, that sets the stage.  Probably 99% of all of this angst is in his imagination, but he's been bringing that imagination to life in our family's daily life for a month now.

Last night, though, things began to look up.  Two of his mates spent the night and they never once talked about soccer.  Thank the stars.

It was a total flash back to 2005 or so, when my eldest (hmmm....do I have a blog name for him?  I might, but thanks to chemo brain, I can't remember) and his mates would get together.  It was a mini-me of the current teenagers hanging out here at the same time.

On top of the emotional wanking that has been going on, we've also had lots of late nights and slow mornings for the past month.  I was out of town for about 10 days, and my husband is an early to bed kind of guy, which meant that the kids were very, very late to bed.  Those of you who still have enough control over your children to have bedtime, might be shocked to hear that an 11 year old was regularly going to bed at 2 a.m. or later and sleeping until noon, but that is a pattern we've fallen into.  Add in a visit from the cousins which makes for a week with looser rules than usual, and...chaos regarding sleep hygiene.

So last night, I agreed to these other two boys spending the night in part to keep the hormonal Feral Third happy but also because I saw it as an opportunity to enforce a bedtime without an argument.  Who wants to act like a toddler and throw a tantrum in front of their friends?  The deal was OK to the sleepover if they agreed to lights out and a movie turned low at midnight. 

It worked.  I removed all the video game controllers so that they weren't tempted to cheat, told them if they'd lay still, they'd be cooler, and they were out.

The Third Wave

This also meant then were awake fairly early this morning.  I was reading and came out of my room at 8:45 and found all three of them awake.  Awake and looking like the older boys they so admire.  I have since begun referring to them as The Third Wave.

Sorting Game Pieces

Now, back in the day, in 2005 or so, my eldest and his buddies would have some wild Risk games.  They'd combine games, boards, pieces, and rules and play for entire weekends.  There have also been many Risk games played at our home by many, many young boys in this town.  It is also a tradition to play Risk with the cousins when they come to visit each year.  It was very heart warming to see The Third Wave getting it on with World Domination with such glee.

Of course, you can't have boys in the house (even if they are on the patio) without feeding them.  I was flashing back to the days when I would regularly stock up on cheap frozen pizzas, frozen burritos, jarred spaghetti sauce, and other food items in mass quantities because I never knew when I'd be called upon to provide food for the hungry hoards.

It's been awhile.

So a trip to the grocery was called for. Hoping that this will not be the last time we have a hoard of hungry boys, I stocked up. 


Then I got to do what I love doing the most.  Providing food for people I love. 

And these people were very appreciative!

The day continued without a hitch.  It included a walk to Walgreen's, a game of volley ball and one of badminton.  They then went to one of the other boys' homes for dinner, returned here, were playing something that involved yelling and running in the dark, and at 10 p.m., more than 24 hours after it  started, the "sleep over" ended.

No fuss, no muss (they did have to be persuaded to clean up the family room, but they did a good job), no arguments, and only one injury (and that was in the last 15 minutes).

I know my member of the Third Wave was asleep early and easily tonight, and I hope he is feeling better about his predicament or at least had 24 hours of not stewing over how unfair life can be at times. 

Yes, it can be, son, but it is still a wild and wonderful place and you might as well ride it hard while you can.

And I'm glad there are Risk players back in the house.

Mother's Day, 2011

I love my boys.  We are not a touchy-feely, sentimental bunch.  Not by a long shot.

OK, I'll admit that I have visions of sugar plums...erm...ideal days.  They rarely come to fruition.  It is what it is.

This morning started off with my 15 year old, awake silly early for some reason--maybe one of his friends was stopping by to pick something up?  I was asleep so I don't really know why he was up.  He just was.  However, being 15, he wasn't happy being awake, let alone being out of bed, and he ended up jumping into bed with me instead of making the journey alllll the way up the stairs to his own bed.  One of the joys of having my bedroom on the first floor (one of the ONLY reasons, I'm thinking these days). I'm not using the word "jumping" here metaphorically.  He JUMPED onto my bed, spouting "Happy Mother's Day!"  My guess is about an hour later he decided that the sun was sufficiently high in the sky and his brothers both being asleep meant that he could control the Xbox, so he wandered off, leaving me with a kiss and the thought that, truely, that could have been our last ever long snuggle together.

At some point, we all got up, showered, dressed and headed off for lunch with the mother-in-law, which was nice as usual.

On the way home, we saw a turtle in the road.  We turn around to go back and move it safely out of the way of traffic.  However, this being a semi-busy rural road without much turning room.  In the minutes it took us to find a place to turn around, wait for the oncoming traffic, and shudder because we were sure each car would squish the turtle, then turn back around because there was no room to pull off on the side of the road, wait for more traffic, the very lucky turtle had made it safely across the road and was into a field.  By this point, my adhd rife family was bored, me included, so we just went on our merry way (at one point, when I identified as a homeschooling mom, I'd have pushed through my own personal boredom and turned this into a forced learning experience....now, not so much).

The Feral Third thought we should all go to a movie, so the boyz treated me to a movie.  I"ll admit, I love super hero movies.  No real surprise.  The older two were well versed in mythology before they even started reading; I sort of did my own sort of Waldorfy education for a while with them, only instead of fairies and gnomes, we immersed ourselves in heros, mythology, and comics.  It only seemed fitting we'd go see Thor for Mother's Day.  The Eldest paid for the tickets with his hard earned money.  The Middle kept the peace.  We rode our bikes.  It was a good time.  Too bad the movie was mediocre.  We did have a good time discussing the mythology, especially the use of Loki, and reminiscing about the time we had spent years ago reading Norse mythology.  I agree with the Eldest who thought we were over analyzing the movie (it doesn't deserve the term "film").  We also, as a family, don't appreciate the 3-D effects and find that they tire our eyes.  The Middle wishes 3-D was used to make the film better, instead of being used to cover up weak films.  Still, it was a super hero movie, and we had a good time.

Chinese buffet for dinner.  Don't ask.  It always smells good, sounds like a good idea, and we always, always always regret it later.

And thus ends a fairly calm, normal day.  We were all together, which rarely happens any more.

I love my boys.

This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased, part II

A year or more ago, I wrote an entry with the same title.  In it I describe how my youngest son procured a very special necklace for me. This post, however, is about another of my sons.

Yes, I'm proud of all three of my sons, one no more than the others.  However, at different times, they all step up to the plate in different and surprising ways.  Lately, it's been the middle one who has me bursting at the seams.

You see, things aren't going so well in Ohio right now.  Our new governor seems intent on turning Ohio into a third world nation of sorts, stripping rights left and right from public workers, imposing not just an conservative agenda but a Tea Party conservative agenda on the state, throwing support to corporations, just all around bad stuff.  The mood here is quite negative.  He's a mean, vindictive guy.  For instance, the state teachers' unions actively opposed his campaign, and he publicly threatened that if they didn't take out full page ads in the large newspapers apologizing for opposing him, he's make them pay.  And so he is.

So, that's the background of what's going on in the state.  Now, my middle son, who is quite the empathetic young man at 15, is also full of vim and vigor when it comes to ideas of how the world should work, what it means to do the right thing, and wants to take an active role in making it happen.  He has an internship with Organizing for America, and prior to that worked to re-elect the former governor, to help get some reforms passed here in town, and has knocked on many, many doors, made many, many phone calls trying to make the world as he sees it a better place.

In recent years, he's grown from the hard to console, harder to please, hardest to placate child I've known to--not to sound trite--a fine, young man, an upstanding member of the community.

Yesterday, this same child who I thought would never leave my side, this same child who I thought would never, ever wean, this same child who I thought would never sleep alone in a bed let alone alone in his own bed (and to save his reputation and mine, I won't mention how old he was before some of these milestones were reached), went to a demonstration in Columbus yesterday to protest against a bill that would limit the rights of public workers to bargain collectively.  Even if I personally didn't oppose the bill (which I do), I'd still be proud of him for going, and even prouder that he was invited to attend the rally by adults with whom he works.

Initially, I'm sure just going to the rally seemed like a fun and exciting day off school.  And it would have been just that.  However, the weather was fickle.  There was  ice, freezing rain, and snow the day prior to the event, leaving school cancelled.  Instead of "missing school to do something cool," this wonderful child got out of bed at almost the same time as a school day, stood in the cold to await his ride, rode on a bus for 3 hours, and then stood in the cold chanting slogans, standing in solidarity for and with public workers, for hours, arriving home close to midnight. 

What I'm especially proud of is that most people don't grow up thinking that the life of public workers is glamorous.  Some few grow up saying they want to be teachers or nurses, police officers or fire fighters.  But few, if any, dwell on the possibility of being a road worker, a linesman, a trash collector.

I'm incredibly proud of my boy and his friend for standing in solidarity for those who don't have the glamour jobs.

Getting My Girl On, part I

99.9% of the time, I'm not only satisfied to be raising all boys but also very appreciative to be raising all boys. I never "got" the girl thing when I was a girl, and it wasn't until I was fully an adult before I even really enjoyed being much in the company of other females, other than a few, select friends, most of whom were not very girly. I had a really girly-girl friend in junior high for awhile, and I mightily tried to live up to her standards of girldom. In high school, off the top of my head, I can't think of too many girl-girl friends with whom I was close....one or two, but not many.

My mother wasn't overly girly.

I would try. And after a few weeks of getting up early to blow dry, apply a curling iron, don the make up, and coordinate the outfit, but eventually, sooner rather than later, I'd be minimizing all the hair work and make up and wearing tshirts and jeans if given the chance.

Not a lot has changed over the years, except that I focus even less on fashion and style.

I spent many an enjoyable afternoon when younger cruising the mall, but I can't say that shopping has been an important part of my life for the past 25 or so years. I go on search and destroy missions: I need X. I go in search of X. I rarely get Y or Z. I rarely just head out to shop for the sake of shopping and without certain items in mind.

My boyz, while clearly having ideas about what clothes are worthy of wearing and which are not, aren't overly interested in fashion. If the shirt has AE on it, they'll wear it. One wears plaid shorts; one won't. One wears long sleeves; one won't. They rarely shop for the sake of shopping.

Two buzz their own hair or have me buzz it. And when I say "buzz," I mean "buzz." One puts no attachment on the electric clippers, taking his hair as close to the scalp as possible. One gets his hair cut a few times a year and isn't too picky about style. He knows what he doesn't want more than what he wants.

Yet, we can be all over noise, movement, experiments, craziness. As one friend said in passing tonight, as I commented on the coolness factor of someone else's boy chomping on a "Pop-It" and having it explode in his mouth, "You are suited for having all these boys" (or something to that effect). Yep, I am. I'm thriving on it. I'm good with it.

I always feared having a girly-girl daughter. What if I just didn't get her? What if she wanted to do things that I have no desire to do? What if she wanted me to teach her about make up? What if she acted like I acted as a young woman? In general, I'm lazy, and girls just seem like so much work to me.

But I digress. In sum, in general, while I wouldn't have sold a girl child to the gypsies and would have loved her from the soles of my feet to the top of my hair, I don't regret not raising any girls. I'm quite content.

That said, I've enjoyed having girls come through my life, more so now that the girls are older. Actually, I enjoy the boys a lot more now that they are older, too. There's nothing like real conversation to make me appreciate a person, male or female.

I rather like it when the boys' female friends come over. I really enjoyed having a girl along on our recent Tennessee camping trip. She provided a slight change in energy from what I am used to. I enjoyed talking about things she and I share an interest in, books that we've both read--books that wouldn't have appealed to my boys at all.

And the first week of July, my niece, Sophie, will be here. For the past few years, she and I have taken part of a day and I've gotten my girl on. We shop; we go to lunch; we watch a chick flick. One time, we did our nails. When my other niece, now in her 30s, was young, I took her out to buy makeup. It's really nice to spend quality time with young women, especially now that I'm old enough for my wackiness to be forgiven (I hope).

It's fun to get my girl on like that. I wish Sophie lived closer, so I could do it more often. I wish that the one girl who's somewhat of a regular at the house weren't so busy these days. We'd planned to have a girl-night at one point, but her job and my family got in the way.

Hmmmm....what should I plan to do with Sophie this summer?

Troopers

When I was a kid, or at least as I remember it, the school year just ended. There might have been a special assembly or something, but I have no recollection of the end of the year activities dragging on and on like they do now. ...school picnics, awards ceremonies, class picnics, field day, themed days (beach day, zany day, bob cat day...), grandparents/special friends days...oh, heck, I can't even keep track of them all. Of course, back in my day, we also didn't have high stakes testing, and whatever tests we did take in elementary school certainly weren't prefaced by test preparation, other than having everyone go to the bathroom and sharpen their pencils. We even took naps in kindergarten and played with toys in first grade. We got three recesses a day: morning, lunch, and afternoon. We walked home for lunch, or at least some of us did. We rode our bikes to school and didn't lock them up on the play ground. And they were still there when we left for the day. So, maybe we didn't need the long, drawn out end of the school year she-bang that exists today.

I have a vague memory of some sort of final exam schedule in high school. I'm not sure if it applied to all four grades or just juniors and seniors. So much of high school is now a blur. I have no recollection of being able to go in late and get out early just because we might not have had an exam at that time. Maybe that happened. I'd probably have chosen to hang out at school in lieu of going home, though, or hang out in the parking lot or something like that. So, maybe we did have the opportunity to have a "final exam day" like my one son had today....go in at 10 and come home at 1:00.

What I do remember about the last day of school from both elementary and high school is the great feeling of relief when that final bell rang. That explosion of energy that came upon me as I left the building. The locker detritus that fluttered like confetti in the hallways. That feeling of expectancy...the summer was there for the grabbing.

And no one dared assign us outside reading or projects in the summer time...or if they did, I have blocked that from my memory as well.

Today was my kids' last day of school for the year. I don't really get the feeling that they are experiencing that huge sense of relief that I remember from my youth (heck, I STILL get that feeling when I walk off campus for the last time each May). Of course, Nathan finished his more difficult, university classes in May and probably only attended 70% of the classes of his one course at the high school. His relief was palpable earlier this month, after he took his last university final. Aidan has to be feeling relieved, but he still has to finish up his Algebra course that he was doing at home. He rather lost momentum when it appeared he'd have to retake the course at the high school next year to get credit, but since that was worked out, he'll have to buckle down next week to finish before he leaves for Puerto Rico next month. Tynan, who has hated every single day of school this year, did just tell me that when the final bell rang today, he felt a sense of freedom and that the bell symbolized a "new beginning." If I felt relief, and I liked school, I imagine he felt beyond relief, because he really despises it....don't get me wrong, he doesn't despise school *work*. He despises **school**. He despises the arbitrary hierarchy, both real and perceived. He despises all of the waiting, the redundancies, the noise. He really finds school stressful and a huge exercise in self-control, which explains his lack of self-control at home many times.

Although it sort of seems that this school year ended with a fizzle rather than the bang I seem to remember, in large part due to the plethora of end of the year activities, my kids, all three of them, deserve huge awards for just surviving this year. They really were troopers.

Less than a month before this school year started, I got my official cancer diagnosis. Two weeks before school started, I met with my oncologist and got my "plan of action." The day before school started--or there abouts--I did my first round of chemo. Sometime between meeting with the oncologist and the start of school, I made the decision--I'd like to say it was a "hard decision" but it really wasn't--to send Tynan to school full time. Since there is virtually no school choice in BG, I didn't have to look for schools. He went to the school down the street from us, where he'd gone for kindy and part-time grade one. He was full time homeschooled for grade 3 (skipping grade two), so he just went back where he'd been before. No brainer, really. It's a small, intimate school. Small classes. High quality teachers. Very nurturing. But he hated nearly every day of being there. Yet, he hung tough. He rocked. And he stuck it out, without once getting into trouble for attitude or behavior. In fact, he was awarded Student of the Month at least three times.

Aidan, though, wow. He really deserves kudos. Initially, the plan was that he'd take ONE class at the high school, which would make him eligible to play soccer. The day before school was to start, he still didn't have a schedule. Late that afternoon, as we met with his guidance counsellor, it became clear to me that getting him to and from school was going to be an issue, and wham-o, he was enrolled nearly full time. It was at least full day enrollment. It was a long, hard year for him. But finally, in the last nine weeks, he pulled it all together and did well. Fortunately for him, the social side of school was easy and he is quite successful there. At one point, he was trying to explain why he wanted to switch study halls: "The only people I know in that study hall are seniors, and do you know how uncomfortable it is to be the only freshman hanging out at a table with all seniors?" He totally missed that he was probably the envy of all the other freshmen in the room....Right now, he plans to go back next year. He was accepted at another school, but since my husband lost his job a few weeks ago, and has no prospects on the horizon, we can't justify taking on the expense of tuition right now. And he's on the waiting list at a charter school, but with the success of Crystal Bowersox on American Idol, an alumna of this particular school, the list is long....

Although Tynan and Aidan deserve awards for toughing it out this past year, Nathan deserves an award for being most flexible. After my diagnosis, not only did he change his schedule at the university--dropping two classes to make himself more available to help out around the house and adjusting his schedule to be able to help with transporting Aidan--he also stepped right up with helping his younger brothers with homework, getting Tynan off to school when I had to work, and driving me to many of my appointments. This past year really has been a rite of passage for him. He's also handled the stress of this past year well. OK, so he got arrested for a snowball fight, but he didn't begin drinking or drugging. Given that he all too well understands the dire potential outcome of cancer, has a good understanding of the economy and our precarious position in it given his father's three job losses, my position at the university, and what all of that means to our family and his future, he handled the stress with grace and maturity.

All in all, my boys were troopers this past school year and are fully deserving of a summer of relaxation. I'm very proud of them.