(That's two different boys up there, though I know it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell them apart!)
My baby boy, or rather my fourteen year old eldest son, the one who is just a hair shy of being taller than his Mama, is starting high school in the fall. High school away from home, high school on a formal schedule with an oh-so-early wake up time, and a most definitive first and last day of the school year. I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say about all of that in the months to come (it feels so big - it IS so big!), but right now, this time of this year, I am noticing the absence of that school schedule, for what appears to be the last spring of our parenting and homeschooling lives. Granted, the kids are involved in so many activities in the community that go year round, and even for those, there is a bit of a break that comes this time of year. Dance recitals are over (and there's a few weeks before summer ballet starts). Theater troupe is on hiatus. Fiddle recital is just around the corner. And for the first time since she was three, Adelaide will be taking the summer off from horseback riding so that she can join her big brothers at Quaker sleepaway camp (gah! how can my little girl be old enough for such a thing?). Still, knowing that next year as everyone gets older there will be even more to do, and especially with the start of a new school schedule to come, I'm feeling mindful that right now, this moment in time, is the end of an era, so to speak.
All that to say, at this moment things are s-l-o-w-i-n-g down and I am l-o-v-i-n-g it. Loving it. Of course I love driving them around (thanks to long car ride chats and audiobooks and podcasts), and I love supporting their passions year round, and I will love sending my son away to school where he is supported and encouraged and happy to be there. I really am. It's my greatest pleasure and honor as their Mama to see them becoming themselves, their passions encouraged, their dreams fulfilled. But oh, I love this month of June (not quite here yet, but yes, I am pushing it!), especially this year. The one in which all of that is on a bit of a break. In which we are - for the most part, nothing but home, home, home. Home! And....together.
My favorite kinds of days are those in which, at the breakfast table, the question is posed "What are we doing today?" and the reply can be "Nothing!" which of course really means....everything and anything. There is gardening and farming to be done, skateboard ramps in and out of doors to be dropped into, another play to perform, a parade to be held, music to be made, art to be created, and definitely some fabulous costumes to wear. Those days - of nothing and everything all at once - are becoming more rare as the years go by in our world. But I am treasuring even more now, the days in which that happens, and treasuring this time of year when a whole string of them can be put together. Bliss.
