You’d think that for a teacher, the coming of May brings on the sweetest feelings. We can all stay up late and stop showering, and we don’t have to pack any more lunches. Can you ask for anything more? However, I’ve come to realize that May is kind of hard for me. Every year I feel overcome with so many different emotions that I become some kind of a mixed bag of sappiness. Let’s be honest, I cried while watching an episode of survivor last week, and (on a different occasion) while listening to a Taylor Swift song, so that tells you where my levels of emotional control are sitting…
There’s just so much build up. Schools out. The temperature sky rockets. I have to shave my legs again? The leaves and grass are actually green. I go from spending 50ish hours a week on my job to spending 0 hours on it. And the end of the school year NEVER feels like a slow, controlled stop. It’s pretty much always a screeching tires, smoking pavement stop, and I must not be wearing my seat belt correctly because it doesn’t exactly feel all good.
So it starts at work…I’ve spent months with students whom I see everyday. I’ve poured time and thought into them and they feel like, actually–they are–a lot more than pupils filling wooden desks. They are people I really care about, and the relationships I have with them will never be the same as when we were all together in that room. As they walk out of my classroom for the last time, (and as they make fun of me for acting like it’s the end of the world) I always find myself hoping that they might actually come back to take a gander at all of those essays I’ve saved for them.
And, of course, it always ends at home…there is no way those tiny, little four pound baby boys are finishing up kindergarten. It’s down right impossible. I’ve spent months, probably years, complaining about packing their school lunches, but the only thing I can thing of at this moment is how I want to make them forever. Maybe the boys will think of me tomorrow when the tears I’ve shed on their fruit salad tonight give it an extra salty bite? Of course, I can dream that they think of me while they’re at school, but we all know the last day of kindergarten for a five-year-old boy does not include visions of his mother. And that’s ok.
Lately I’ve actually kind of been dreading going to their final chapel celebration of kindergarten. It’s felt like a build up to some kind of torture. I know I’ll be sitting there ugly crying next to my mom who is ugly crying who is next to my grandma who is ugly crying. Torture for me AND Ryan, right? But then tonight at bed, Elliot asked me if I’m excited to see him get his certificate. Of course, I said yes. Because it’s not about me. It’s about celebrating all of their accomplishments and growth, and it’s not really about me wanting to snuggle them forever. While it is incredibly hard, I think we all need this reminder. With or without the tears, the celebrations of our children should be exactly that–a commemoration of the wonderful people they are growing up to be. I have to take myself out of it. I’m going to remember to savor that thought tomorrow when, inside my head, I’ll probably be attempting to wave my magic wand and wish them back to babies so Ryan and I can do it all over again, just one more time.
Real Always Wins 