Bye Week

We watched all the football this past weekend and as a result I find that I keep thinking about this week’s bye week. We know who is going to the SuperBowl and those athletes get a week off to rest, to recover and to recuperate. I have decided that this is a brilliant idea and that I need a bye week as well: a bye week from parenting.  I need time to rest, recover and recuperate so that I can start again fresh and be ready to be awesome in this next round of parenting.

The boy turns twelve today and I was okay about that until we started talking about how he was the skinniest baby in the world when he was born.  Maizy sent us some pictures she found of him when he was about three and they just killed us:  soft, yellow hair, no glasses and that huge space where his two front teeth were knocked out. These pictures are so super sweet, however it is the look of pure joy on his face that grabs my heart and smacks it.  There has not been a lot of joy on his face this year.  Middle school can suck the joy out of even the happiest kid in record time.   I look at those pictures and barely remember the tiny kid he was and only see the big kid he is now and it makes me a little sad, a little wistful and hoping I enjoyed him then and trying to find ways to enjoy him now.  

Maizy graduates in about four months and if that isn’t crazy enough, she has also decided she is moving to California pretty much the second she graduates.  I don’t think I have really given it a lot of thought other than I think she is taking the hard road and we talked about that, but she is 18 and she knows what she wants to do.  Bill gets teary every time it comes up and as I write this, I realize I am sad too.  This girl and I have gone head to head and toe to toe and taught each other a lot about ourselves and what makes a family.  She is a terrible slob, mostly non-committal when I ask her to do something and slightly self-absorbed, but she is also as funny as hell and integral to who we are as a family.  Damn, now I am really sad.

SG, normally my rock, my stalwart child and my kindest soul, killed me with her words yesterday.  Her words reached into my chest cavity and pulled out my still-beating heart which she then held in her hands and utterly destroyed with her tone.  The look on her face and the hate in her eyes then finished it off by tearing it to shreds.  I know this is timely, I know it was bound to happen, I know I have been lucky on what a good girl she has been, I know.  But it still hurts!  And even though Bill stepped in as the heavy and made her stop, made her see it from my side, even though she apologized later, it still hurts.  I forgive her and I see she feels bad, but I need some time to regenerate my crushed and shattered heart.

Just one of the looks I have received this week.

Therefore, I need a bye week. I need a week where my children are cryogenically frozen and where I can rest and recover from them.  I need a week to pause and think about what it is I am trying to teach them and how I can best do that while letting them make their own mistakes.  I need a little time to reflect in how little they once were and how big they are now and how much bigger they are going to get.  Bill and I need some time to regroup and focus on us.  Just one week off to look at all the parenting we’ve done and gear up for all that we still have to do.  I’d love to hit the rest of this parenting thing refreshed and repaired.

I know that I won’t get that bye and I won’t get that rest and I am jealous of professional athletes and a little weary of myself.  But weary or not, we push on.  I will keep trying to pull the boy out of the cocoon of “cool” he tries to layer himself in and celebrate when I see actual joy come across his face again.  I will admonish, lecture and preach about all the things Maizy needs to think about before she goes but I hope that I listen, encourage and laugh with her as well.  And as for SG, she and I are going to have more of those major disagreements but I will try hard to remember that I am the adult.  Or at the very least, learn to guard my heart.