Summer, We Hardly Knew Ye

Well, it's time.

Time to send the Tornadoes back to school. To return to our regularly scheduled program of planned chaos. To get back to business.

I could apologize for not breathing any life into this portal since last Wednesday, but I'm not going to. It has simply been too perfect outdoors these past four days - and this after a summer of incessant, cold rain - that there was really no choice to be made. The sun was shining and we were going to bask in it, damn it!

Something about this long overdue taste of summer seemed to bring home the fact that the girls are a grade older now, a fact I have clearly tried to deny all season by continuing to address them by their former grades. I've been asked a few times recently if I was looking forward to the new school year beginning - asked by fellow mothers, mind you, whose own sense of joy was palpable - and truly all I could muster in response was: "meh."

One could say that this is not a "milestone" year for us. We are not entering grades with any special significance to the American Greetings of the world. One could say that. But One would be wrong.

It must have been the Tornadoes' own mounting anticipation over recent weeks (read: school supplies carefully organized; pencils sharpened; backpacks ready and waiting at the front door for ELEVEN DAYS; first, second and third day of school outfits selected) that finally opened my eyes. It is a milestone year. It's another year that they are truly excited to go to school. Excited! How many kids are really excited about going back to school? ...Okay, I was always pretty excited, I admit...but I do remember a great number of my classmates sporting a pronounced lack of enthusiasm, or at least faking disinterest, in pursuit of whatever popularity that won them.

Yes, the Tornadoes are still young, and yes, there are still plenty of future First Days to contend with. Yes yes. But today? A tiny, fingertip pat on my own back for whatever small role I've played in convincing them that school is GOOD. And a bucketful of gratitude for the teachers who do the heavy lifting. They keep them engaged and they don't even get to occasionally take them to the beach.

So. Third Grader and Fifth Grader -there, I said it - let's do this thing.