this day. this life. some sort of a mood.

We started school this week.

Which feels sad now in August but should feel pretty happy come May.

I have three high school students.

THREE.

I feel as if I need to shout everything I say today.

It all feels monumental. Or something.

I’ve been saying to the kids all day – I’m in some kind of a mood today.

I really cannot explain it.

The start of school.

Am I ready?

The stress of high school math.

Shoot, of all math.

The high cost of education. And I do mean that both figuratively and literally.

And don’t even get me started on whether public school is free or home school is free.

Ain’t nothin’ free.

I watched my two youngest and our neighbor set up a lemonade stand. They stayed out there for HOURS.  (Yep. Still shouting.)

They rode their scooters between sales. They created a game where the  losers followed the winners on their scooters in “slow defeat”. Their words, not mine.  They played long involved games of hand claps or hopscotch of the hands. I know it has a real name, but it’s eluding me.  Made up rhymes and rhythms that they repeat while slapping hands. You all know what I mean. Please don’t make me shout it.

It was precious. Tender.

The legitimate epitome of childhood and summer days.

And I watched it from my window while I worked on a story for work and edited photos. I felt like I was watching their childhood happen. And pass.

I don’t know.

I told you I was in some kind of a mood.

This afternoon my sixteen year old daughter took her first behind-the-wheel driver’s training. 

She just drove away in a car with a police officer and I can’t decide if that made me feel better or worse. She was nervous and I was too.  Wasn’t she just a toddler, thrilled with her new red tricycle?

This morning I clicked “purchase” and spent over $400 on school curriculum. (See point made previously about nothing being free.)

I shed actual tears. As in. You know – real deal tears.  

I don’t even know why really. It’s just money. It comes and it goes and we all know this. I know this at forty six years old.

Yesterday my adult daughter joined us for dinner. She’s expecting my third grandchild – my first granddaughter.

WHAT IN THE ACTUAL WORLD?

And Maddox, her son, tried on a tiger costume that most of the kids were obsessed with when they were his age.  It was one of those post-Halloween Wal-Mart spontaneous purchases from more than a decade ago.  MORE THAN A DECADE.  I adored the sight of my kids wandering around wearing that favorite get up. And now they play video games and talk about movie stars and think about college choices.

And there Maddox was. My kid’s kid. Running around being a tiger.

This life is a mystery.

It’s full and wide and deep.  It’s short, too. It’s startling and it’s full of aches and growing pains and hurts too heavy to say out loud and joys too flimsy to dare speak of.

___________________________________