August 12, 2014
School Registration Day. The day kids wait for in August to find out who their teacher will be this school year. The day they call all their friends to see who is sharing this classroom experience with them for the next nine months. The non-stop phone ringing (or texting) that is fun and exciting or disappointing depending on weather your BFF is in your class.
Well our phone is not buzzing. Our house is quietly subdue. The kids are feeling left out of this summer right of passage, and anxious about their upcoming, unknown school world. Questions rising in them--- will my friends from school still be my friends? Will they still call me? Will they change a lot? Am I going to be left out of everything? My oldest is expressing his curiosity about what Junior High would be like. Lockers, gym clothes, eight different teachers. The youngest is getting snappy and irritable around all the school talk, and is blatantly telling others how home school will be waaaaay better. The husband is questioning again, in his manly passive aggressive way, the concerns and problems that we may be underestimating.
I am recognizing all these behaviors fall under one big category entitled LOSS. There is a sense of loss happening with all of us, even I myself am feeling a loss. It is an interesting place for me to be in. I am the one answering the questions, reassuring the uneasy feelings, listening, planning for our new adventures, and taking the brunt of the disagreeing public. I am the one who is most confident in the need of a new progressive educational path. And still, there is a loss for me too--of friends I had through the school system, the teachers I have loved, other moms, and my childrens’ friends that I would see volunteering at school. This loss of the known is an teachable moment in emotional growth for us as a family. As we make our way through this transitional phase, I am reminded of an Arnold Bennett quote, “Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.”
