Errythang gonna be alright this mornin’.
The incidental oracle strikes again. I remember posting this picture to facebook. I thought I was being pretty clever:
I can’t believe it’s finally here! Andy’s 14,418th day of school!
Bittersweet, as it seems like only yesterday he was drinking Mickey’s Big Mouths on his way to jumping out of airplanes and – what was his favorite little saying? Oh yeah: “I’ll never get married or have children. Depend upon it.” What an adorable little dreamer he always was!
Well, he’s really on his way now, and it isn’t terribly hard for us to see the day when he finally gets a job and makes something of himself. Ok, so it IS kind of hard to see, but we remain hopeful!
Go out there big boy and makes us, um, sort of ambivalent about admitting our relation to you!
Joke’s on me, eh? It’s two hours until I sit down in a classroom for the first time since about 1996. I’ve taken online classes, and one sort of dreary writing class on the University of Washington campus. Nights, once a week. The class was all women over 50, and me, and the instructor. I started out by grumbling in my head about the absurdity of it all. By the time it was over it was obvious that no matter what these people were or were not capable of writing, they all were at least capable of writing something. And more importantly – of liking it. They were out there finding their fun. Pleasure seekers – honest ones.
Well the clock’s running down on me now. In every grand and corny metaphorical way there is, and also literally. Thankfully my kids are pretty well capable of getting themselves ready for school. Two years ago that was not the case. Of course two years ago I was still potty training The Boy. It’s good to sit here now, thinking about how far they’ve come, and to be able to say “I did that. We’ve done this.” We’re going to have some work done on our house, and when it’s finished we’ll be able to say “that’s beautiful.” But aside from some creative input (and the endless hours of work it takes to pay for it), we won’t be able to say “we built that.” There’s extra in there, and I am boundlessly grateful that we made the choices we made a couple of years ago, so that when the kids tackle their mornings -and eventually tackle whole piles of madness – without us, we can say “we built that.” We get to have – we get to be – the extra in there.
The best part? That no matter how able they are to get ready for school without me, I’m not able to get ready for school without them.
Andy Havens 