What does the end of the school year mean to me? Really? About nineteen Excedrin, three Imitrex, and one black sweater wrapped around my head to block the shards of light in my brain.
I know my son’s school means to instill some contemplation and gratitude with their end-of-year note. But the truth is that the third-to-last week of school meant that I leaned back into the weather and stopped caring about whether or not the homework was done or the violin was practiced or that a fruit product made it into the lunchbox. So these last two weeks of school are CRUSH TIME. Which means:
- Gotta run lines with MacBeth so that teenager does not break into Monty Python impression onstage.
- Gotta attend pesky violin recital in which fourth grader will play Twinkle Twinkle with the one flat note exactly like he has been doing at home for three months.
- Gotta fly to California for work (of course!!)
- Gotta do something about the state of my bathroom because my mother is coming for MacBeth and the pesky violin recital.
- Gotta skip that volunteer breakfast cuz I can’t remember volunteering in any significant way this year.
- Gotta find missing sports banquet tickets. Maybe they are in the grotty bathroom??
- Gotta think of something to express my gratitude to these teachers who DID manage to educate my kids this year.
And that is just this week. My mother used to mark end-of-year CRUSH TIME by accidently wearing some article of clothing inside out. At a school event. My girlfriend marks this time of year by dinner from the concession stand . Every night. For a week. Me, I’ll be peering out from under my black sweater trying to get it all done without noticing that at the end of the school year my kids are a little bit older, a little bit taller, and standing a little bit further away from childhood all the time.
