(Point of fact: that last statement about no agenda is false. I signed the kids up for twice-weekly swimming lessons. CAM is Mon-Wed and WHM is Tues-Thurs. So we most definitely have a daily agenda, and I may well come to regret this ambitious commitment. But it's at the Y and I will be able to work out and I am quite looking forward to the idea of getting fit again. I may even break out the nook and get back to reading the same Mickey Mantle biography I last read in June 2012, before we moved.)
And yet I am incredibly sad, because it means I now have a second-grader and a kindergartener, and here we all are, another year older and the kids are another year closer to being grown-ups. (And as for me, I'm another year older and still don't feel like a proper grown-up and in the wee hours of the night while everyone is asleep this causes whole other issues I shall save to discuss on a rainy, melancholy day!) I feel like I've missed so much of CAM's and WHM's lives already. I can't believe that we moved up here with a brand-new three-year-old and a girl just about to enter kindergarten, and now I've got a little boy about to enter kindergarten, and a little girl who's about to enter second grade! Maybe it's hitting me harder because I have several specific but limited memories of kindergarten and first grade, and I have more vivid memories of second grade. I suppose I am thinking that CAM is starting to form her own memories and I wonder, sometimes, what they are and whether I've already messed her up enough to need therapy. And whether insurance will cover said therapy or I should start saving.
I've said this before, but it has been a hard adjustment to go from being a stay-at-home-mom in Georgia to working full-time in Maine. Either of those alone would have been enough for me, and together it's taken me probably even more than twice as long to get adjusted. Don't get me wrong: I live my life pretty well-adjusted every day, but I do get sad. I don't have that many friends here, and I miss that. I miss my sister, who of course is in Orlando now, anyway, but I miss the idea of her being 20 minutes away. I miss my days of going to Hobby Wobby with my little guy while his big sister was at school. My goodness, when we first moved back to Georgia from Alabama, he was in an infant carrier and I carried him in to pick CAM up from ballet once a week! I have no idea what happened that I am sitting here with a second grader and a kindergartener. In Maine.
I don't do change well, and this has been a lot of change all at once. I made it through two school years, but it still feels like only yesterday we were in Georgia. Stuff is still in boxes in storage. At the same time, it feels like an eternity ago. I haven't seen my friends in Atlanta in two years. What?!?!?!
I don't mean to sound whiney or melancholy. I'm incredibly thankful. We are happy and healthy and I don't take that for granted for a millisecond. I am well aware that even if we blinked our eyes and were back home in Atlanta, nothing would be as it was. I get that. I am not sad in the "I want to go back" kind of way. I just have no idea where the time has gone. Maine has been good to us, to be sure. But I have no idea how we got here. Does that even make any sense?
I take photos of the kids almost every morning when I drop them off at school. They're all on my cell phone, and I usually post them as a morning snapshot to Facebook. When I look back at August 2013 and compare it to now, the difference is amazing. I am hardly ever in any pictures -- neither is Mick -- and I want to change that. I wish I had photos to compare our August 2013 to now, too. I wonder whether we look happier now, as things in our lives have taken some positive turns this year, and especially recently.
I didn't mean to write a sad post, but I've definitely been hypersensitive to the bittersweetness of the end of this school year.
Ah, but as one of my sisters used to say, "no worries!"
It's going to be a busy and awesome summer, and it is going to go quickly, since it won't even start until June 21. I'm going to start it by cleaning the basement and getting the kids a giant playroom area that they can actually access, spacious and uncluttered enough that they will be able to keep it clean(ish) on their own. Then I'm going to attack their bedrooms, with the same goals. Then I'm going to go through closets and purge too-small clothes.
I know that sounds like last thing most folks would want to do, but I'm looking forward to it. I look forward to the first rainy day that we're trapped inside and there's a viable awesome playroom. I'm looking forward to writing and publishing the 99,000 blog posts I have on my backlog list. I'm looking forward to catching up on Sweet As Pie recipes, and hopefully to a vacation to see my sister and some friends; to doing a whole lot of pleasure reading that I didn't get to do when I was studying for the bar exam; to hopefully taking a weekend to Acadia National Park; and hey -- I'm looking forward to summer.
I just can't believe that's in only two weeks! Holy cow!
Happy Almost Summer! The "bitter-sweetest" time of the year. :)
--Jen
* I am also really looking forward to "attorney-ing." I know it's a full-time job that I won't quite be doing full-time, but I'm incredibly excited about getting to do it at all. Funny how six years ago I had no desire to go to court -- ever -- and now I'm almost giddy (and okay, nervous, too) at the idea of it becoming reality very soon!
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