Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Picture This In Your Mind

The children are up early and all eager to get to school. It's a new year, and my twin first graders are happily putting on their clothes and tying their shoes (and asking Mommy to double-tie so they don't trip at recess or phy. ed)...and everybody is compliant, brushing their teeth, fixing their hair, etc. etc. The boy is a little less exuberant than the others, strangely enough having a hard time arising early on this day. Funny - he gets up earlier than this in the summer and on weekends. But the excitement of a new bookbag, new shoes, a new teacher, and reuniting with friends is rubbing off on him.

Don't forget the purple ponytail for Paige, so the teacher can tell her apart from Shae!

Don't forget the registration fee for Ally to play volleyball, or the physical card, or the sock money, or the water fountain usage fee! (Okay, that last one is a little sarcastic but I'm telling you, we're not far from that...)

Don't forget the shoe boxes that you decorated, Shae and Paige!

Don't forget the note for Cy because he has to see the ENT on Thursday morning!

Don't forget that Ally won't ride the bus home, as her first practice starts tonight!

The children are chatting as they wait at the end of the driveway for the bus to arrive. They get down there in plenty of time, waiting 20 minutes and starting to worry that maybe they were forgotten and there will be no time to eat the blessed school breakfast which offers five times more cereal and three times more juices than Mom's 24-hour diner.

Mom feeds the chickens and calves and reloads the feed bucket while the kids are still waiting, a little nervous, at the end of the road. "Mom, did we miss him??" the oldest shouts up to me, and I hunch my shoulders and enter the house to check the clock and the answering machine (just in case we did, indeed, miss the bus pick-up time). But then the bright yellow bus comes rolling down the hill, braking to stop at the end of our driveway and pick up four very precious people. We exchange a few air kisses (just about as good as those forehead pecks the children endured moments earlier) and waves and "have a good day"s. A tinge of sadness, a few more prayers, and a small, shameful, Slacker Mom-feeling of glee that the house is quiet for a while, before the baby wakes up. (And yes, a 3-year-old can still be called the baby. Don't argue with me on that point.)

Sadly our camera died last week, just in time to miss the first football game and the start of school. Ironically, an e-mail tells me this morning that the new camera will arrive sometime tomorrow. Sigh. We shall have to remember this time, this start of 1st, 3rd, and 5th grade, in our memory and with words. Hopefully we can commemorate the "first WEEK of school" in a few days. Not sure if the enthusiasm will fade a bit by then, but we shall carry on! There are worse things in life than not having a camera. And you know what? Sometimes you remember things better when all you have to rely on is yourself.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.--Philippians 2:5

1 Comments:

Blogger Astrid in Bristling Acres said...

I was so spaced out that I totally forgot to take any photos this morning! Oops. Annika jumped right out of bed when I told her it was the first day of school. She was so excited to see her friends again!

September 1, 2009 at 10:49 AM  

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