Losing Some Illusions

Hello and welcome to the first Saturday of March here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Can you believe it's March already?

Since I began working at a public school last fall, my sense of time has been broken down into three 12-week chunks. The first trimester was a blur as I learned how to ride the pony of a brand-new job. I remember holding on tightly to the reins and feeling a thrill but also just enough terror to hang on for dear life.

Yesterday was a wrap on the second set of 12 weeks, and while I've gotten a much better handle on the horse, and life slowed down to a steady trot instead of a gallop, I still felt like it would have been great to have had a February 29th, 30th and a 31st.

I'm sure I've shared this many times before over the five years of the Wannaskan Almanac blog, so humor me and just let me say it again: My father always told me that time got faster as you got older - and he was right.

Two-thirds of the school year is done. Only 1 trimester to go. One trimester is 12 weeks. Twelve weeks?! There is still so much to do and it's only twelve weeks. The Fifth Grader and I just looked at the calendar and counted 58 days left of school. Fifty-eight days. Whew. I can work with 58 days. But after those 58 days, something will happen - the WAKWIR* will be a senior. The kid I call my golden retriever - his thick dark curls flapping like the silky, floppy ears of a favorite pet - will be cheerfully bounding through his last lap of high school.

And I'm having all sorts of new feels that I didn't feel with the older two. Like, I missed him when he went with the band last week to the Girls State Hockey Tournament. "Why aren't they coming home right after the game?" I groused on Saturday. On Sunday, I griped to my husband about our son missing Mass, but really, it was me missing him. And again on Thursday when the band traveled to Thief River Falls to the Boys Hockey Sectionals, I groaned again. "Geez, don't you have homework or something? Tomorrow is the last day of the trimester!" Then Friday came along and when he said he was coming straight home after school to just be home - my heart did a little happy dance.

I can honestly say I didn't have these kinds of feelings for the first two kids. For the very first - The Oldest - I was way too excited for her to be sad for myself. And with the second, well, let me be even more honest - as much as I love the kid and am so very proud of him - he was driving us crazy. With College Student 2.0, let's just say it was time for him to go. Our oldest two children are thriving and doing all the things I had hoped they would be doing in this very sweet spot of life, enjoying the privileges of being an adult without all of the responsibilities.

But the WAKWIR is different. We'll go on his college road trip and the countdown will be on. Before I know it, he'll graduate and it'll be a wrap on the first round of our kids. The oldest three will have flown the coop. Yes, I know (now) that the college-student children need their parents just as much during that phase of life as all the previous phases, but our daily home life reality will be shrunk to a family of four instead of seven.

My husband and I have talked about it a little and we don't even know what to do with ourselves with only four people. Do we scale back and bake only one chicken? Will we need only one gallon of milk? Will a pot of soup last a week? Will my cooking go completely to pot and we'll opt for pizza three times a week? 

When I try to imagine what our lives would have been like if we'd "only" had the first three kids, it feels lonely. And when I try to imagine "only" having two kids in our home, that feels lonely, too. What a paradox after years of daydreaming and looking forward to when I'd *finally* have more time to myself.

So, on this Saturday, I think about all of the moms who've shed tears and shared their grief about their children's imminent flight from the nest. I didn't understand. I didn't know. I didn't feel the same way. But with only twelve weeks left to the last trimester of my last kid's junior year - I think I do.

Thank goodness I still have three more summer months, followed by three more 12-week trimesters, to process it all and get ready.