On the first day of school, you meet all of these people who will be part of your life for ten months, and during that time you get to know more about them than you ever thought possible. You know what make them happy, what scares them, how they like to be celebrated. Sometimes you worry about them when you should be "off work." You wonder if you're doing enough to help them become the people they deserve to be. You get on their nerves and nag them and get frustrated when they don't put in full effort. In a very short time they become your kids.
On the last day of the school year, you bid farewell to your kids and you hug them and you hope that they'll come back and visit and you hope that they'll remember your name when you see them in the grocery store in five years. You hope they realize throughout their lives how very capable they are because you see it in them.
(You hope, too, that you remember their names when you see them in five years because you're old. Maybe that's just me.)
No one gets that day this year. And it's sad.
I've had several conversations with my friends and my kids and myself about how it's so very okay to be sad. Many parts of this stink, and we can own that. We just can't live in it. I hope my educator friends own this crappy development and then can make the choice not to wallow there. We've still got good work to do.
When I feel down or overwhelmed, my mantra has been "no wallowing." I should get a shirt with that printed on it.
In the spirit of not wallowing, I have other stuff to talk about today.
I participated in my first virtual job fair today, and it was fantastic! I had my own "room" and when candidates entered a little doorbell went off to alert me. Then I could un-mute my camera and mic and visit with them, exchanging information. Once the conversation was done, I muted everything again and went back to working on other things. I have two more of these in the coming weeks, so I'm interested to see if they all go as smoothly.
At one point I was active at the job fair waiting on candidates, on a chat with colleague, and on a chat with technical support for a program I use troubleshooting something. I stopped, looked around, and realized how incredibly happy I was in that moment. It was busy and productive and I was handling it like a champ. It felt good deep in my brain for it be so engaged!
Speaking of work, on Monday I started a spiral notebook to jot down what I do each day. As the days run together and I spend hours and hours in my home office, I find myself wondering if/when I took care of X, Y, or Z. My new spiral notebook keeps from questioning my sanity. It's also perfect college ruled paper and written on with a good pen, so basically it's awesome.
On my last trip to the grocery store I bought jelly bellies. I always keep some in my office because they power my brain when I need to focus, so I'm excited to finally have some at home. I eat them one at a time, picking out the black licorice and juicy pear as I go because they are disgusting and only gross people eat them (sorry if that's you).
Today I was working and popping in jelly beans and making my tiny little pile of black and green ones to put in the trash later, and something caught my eye. Half of the "black" jelly beans in my pile were actually a dark purple. Grape. In the light from my office windows I could distinctly tell the difference. I wonder how many innocent grape jelly beans have been victimized because I thought they were black.
In my last bit of news, last week we ordered Keaton a tumble track. He hasn't been in the gym since spring break, and you can't exactly do gymnastics without a gym. I didn't tell him I had ordered it, mostly because I couldn't deal with him asking me when it would be here every eleven minutes until it showed up. Today it arrived, he was surprised, and it was wonderful. He's flipped all afternoon. When he came in to get dinner he remarked that his abs are already sore. Watching Keaton tumble in the front yard is a whole lot of fun for me.
As I was writing this, I got the email that the rest of the gymnastics season is officially cancelled. Now I'm sad again.
But only for a bit. Because no wallowing.
The end.
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