Every year, on Julia’s first day of school, I have one glorious, luxurious fantasy. I take a long hot, deep bubble and salts bath with a glass of prosecco and a few choice pieces of very dark chocolate waiting for me. Afterwards, I indulge in a massage and facial. I expect nothing more of myself that day other than to enjoy and revel in the indulgence. (FYI: I never indulged in such fantasy raising a typical child and working full time. I usually regretted homework free time together, but that was the extend of first day of school musings.) In reality, I am prone to waste the day, dithering in the house, hanging out much too long on the internet, trying to find reasons not to get off the couch and at the same time, pushing myself to mop up after the summer, take care of money matters, correspondence and everything I’ve put aside in favor of whatever was happening with Julia. That is much closer to what I am doing today. Continue reading
Last weekend of the summer.
This morning, 6 a.m., I dropped her off at school and she climbed onto a yellow bus filled with enthusiastic, yet somewhat drowsy cheerleaders each with identical shorts and tee shirts. Cheer camp weekend! The team will arrive at a high school a few towns over before 8, register and begin their very scheduled day at 9. Warm ups, chant class, dance class, stunt class, jump class, private coaching, cheer class and evaluation until 9:30 p.m., to be repeated tomorrow until they board the bus again at 9:00 p.m. In between, they will sleep on the gym floor.
Yesterday, on the month anniversary of the massacre by a 19-year old using a semi-automatic style weapon at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which left 17 dead and 14 injured, students all over the United States walked out of class to protest gun violence and to demand action by their lawmakers. These clear, young eyes see the NRA’s emasculation of the GOP, the party which controls all three branches of our federal government and 33 state houses across the USA. They see that the best the GOP president can do is host a roundtable discussion about violent video games after the NRA made him walk back his gun control comments. I’ve heard and read “grown-ups” criticizing students for meddling in issues they do not understand and insinuating that the protesters only wanted to get out of classes, but possibly those “grown-ups” know a very different kind of student than I know. I applaud the students who organized demonstrations of all sorts yesterday and who intend to demand more from the rest of us to end gun violence with gun control. 
Saturday: My second basketball game in as many days. No, I haven’t gone over to the dark side (excuse me, my basketball-loving Hoosier friends). Julia is cheering. Not perfectly by any means although pompoms hide many a sin, cheerleaders stand to one side of the basket and cheer from the side, and most folks are here for the basketball players. She is very happy. Tonight she doesn’t even have ear plugs in. The gym’s echo is quite pronounced and the buzzer is incredibly loud and annoying. No complaints from the girl.
There is snow on the roof this morning. Just the smallest of sprinklings which will disappear in the morning rain. It is almost 8 a.m. and Julia is still asleep. She loves the first snow and I puzzle whether to wake her. But she so infrequently sleeps this long and we were out late last night. I let her sleep.
Chasing Joy 