Christmas 2018

Brian and I went to an amazing and magical Christmas party last night. The theme was “My Favorite Things” and was complete with raindrops on roses, girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, brown paper packages tied up with string, and yes, even a real cream-colored pony.  I’ve been singing the song for the past 2 days and also trying to think of how to write another Christmas letter: this one marking 25 years of Christmas letters from the Danahys.

So here, in no particular order, are “My Favorite Things” from this year.

1. Spring Break saw us in New York City.  Edwin, Brian and I took in the tourist sights – and food, (thank you Sean Danahy for all the amazing recommendations) and shows with a few days spent visiting Colin in Troy, NY.  “Dear Evan Hansen” was definitely a highlight for all of us – and the boys took in Madison Square Garden for a Knicks game.

2. Colin and Aidan took at 5000 mile road trip from NY to CA this summer. It was circuitous and involved Cleveland, Nashville, New Orleans, Dallas, Kansas, camping, Yellowstone, Utah, more camping, and parts up down and in between.

3. Colin graduated Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a Masters degree in Technology Commercialization & Entrepreneurship.  We watched the livestream of it in the parking lot as:

4. Aidan graduated University Nevada Reno with his Bachelors degree in Art with an emphasis in Digital Media on the same day in May.

5. Julia finished her first year at Gonzaga and we were able to catch a glimpse of her on TV cheering for the Zags as they made their way through the NCAA tournament. We are hoping for another good, long run this year too.

6. Edwin started his sophomore year at Saugus High School and has jumped full into the theater department: as part of the large group drama, he and 5 other thespians took first place at the fall competition in a piece based on vampires and bullying – and kissing.  Which… was a surprise to his mother when she saw it performed for the first time. 

7. Edwin turned 16, got his learner’s permit and will take the driving test on December 21. He spent much of his summer break working on and fixing my Dad’s old Buick – aka the eyesore in the driveway - and hopes to be driving it proudly to school this winter.  As it lacks functional a/c, it will probably not be driven when it hits 90.  Which could be as early as March around here.

8. Julia spent her summer as a Day Camp Counselor – and found that she had an affinity for working with kids.  Her no-nonsense, take charge attitude (wonder where she got that from…) – sprinkled in with bribes of candy on field trips to get kids to cooperate – made for an interesting summer full of great stories.  Life lesson: always bring a spare set of chonies in case yours get wet.

9. Aidan purchased a bus.

10. Brian’s former Baxter/Baxalta/Shire Building 8 project was the 2018 Facility of the Year Awards (FOYA) Overall Winner at the 2018 ISPE Annual Meeting & Expo in Philadelphia, PA this November.  Years of hard work, company and personnel turnover followed this project and as Engineering Program Leader, it kept Brian extremely busy.  We were all proud that the hard work was recognized in the industry.

11. I was selected to a new non-profit board: Raising the Curtain Foundation, the supportive arm of the newly renovated Newhall Family Theatre for the Performing Arts.  There are many creative people on this board, who will do great things for the community and arts programming. My (non-creative) role has been to set them up and secure non-profit status for the board.  And may possibly lead me to bigger things for 2019.  Stay tuned…

12. Aidan has found employment as a Ski Instructor at Squaw Valley and a substitute teacher for Innovations, a non-traditional, alternative high school in Reno. 

13. Aidan is trying to sell a bus.

14. Colin is working hard at his startup company – Storagy.  A solar optimization software for utility companies. He is based at home, but we don’t see much of him, as he’s usually in meetings, at conferences or networking.

15. Julia is in her second year at Gonzaga. Her club soccer team (again) made it to Nationals – this time in Alabama where they made it (again) to the Sweet Sixteen.  The soccer field was not kind to Julia (again) this year – a hand splint and concussion recovery were on deck this season. But it has not slowed her down a bit.  When not studying, she volunteers with Meals on Wheels, and at a Crisis Nursery every Friday night.  She has recently taken up salsa dancing, and her mother couldn’t be prouder.

16. Edwin is doing his best Napoleon Dynamite impressions around here. AP Chemistry, Soccer, Engineering, Theater and Science Olympiad are doing their job in helping fuel the stress and proper angst required to pull off the impersonation.  He’s getting quite good at it – must be the theater.

17. I still enjoy coffee. A lot.

18. Notre Dame’s final season win was attended by all of us Danahys here in LA at the Coliseum. While we all appreciated the win, I think the street hot dogs after the game were appreciated more (by some of us.)

19. Brian says he doesn’t miss coaching soccer. While this may possibly be true, he doesn’t miss a chance to practice with his kids when they ask him to shoot around with them at Central Park or the high school.  And I believe Julia and Edwin can both beat him on workout runs.

20. I laced up my running shoes and ran 2 5ks this year – one surrounded by 3000 women dressed as Wonder Woman. I highly recommend this race as the energy and motivation surrounded by that many strong women can’t be beat.

20 favorite things for 2018.  

No schnitzel. No noodles. No wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings.

But there’s always room for a bright, copper kettle on a list of favorite things.

My tribe

These are the women.

These are the women who:

meet together for coffee: every Friday morning for 20 years running
watch our children and care for them as if they were their own
help us bury our parents
stand next to us through crumbling marriages and steady us through divorce
care for us in illness, cancer and depression
listen to us sigh, complain, and cry into our drinks
pull us on to the dance floor
motivate us to exercise
commiserate with our aches and pains of age
make our faces and bellies ache with infectious, contagious laughter
buy enough shoes in one shopping trip to last a lifetime
keep our secrets
fortify us when we can't stand on our own.
work together to put on school events, family events and weddings
hold us accountable in our place in this life
pack our houses - and clean toilets - when we move
celebrate milestone birthdays with us
create and use the word 'craft' as a verb
drink wine and sing along at the Hollywood Bowl
drink coffee with


These are the women who I mark time with, walk through the world with and celebrate life with. This is my tribe and these are my people.

#vonsforlife

Yesterday I attended the soft re-opening of my local VONS grocery store.  The Grand Opening is next Wednesday morning, March 9 at 8am.  I know this because it has been on my calendar for weeks now.  The soft opening yesterday was an unexpected event – a more than pleasant surprise. 

Over a year ago, Albertsons grocery chain acquired Safeway stores – which owned the Southern California grocery chain VONS.  VONS has been a Southern California institution since it started in Los Angeles in 1906 by Charles Von der Ahe.  The merger of Safeway and Albertsons affected our local VONS store, as it was geographically too close to the local Albertsons and therefore couldn’t continue to operate as a VONS due to some strange FTC anti-trust laws.  So the local VONS closed its doors in June and reopened the next day as a Haggen’s.  While I’m sure that Haggen’s flourishes in its native locations, my old VONS location and its shoppers did not embrace it at all.  We weren’t about to pay $5 for a bottle of salad dressing in a Whole Foods wannabe knock-off grocery store. Ours was not the neighborhood for this new store: Haggen’s perhaps needed to share a parking lot with a Macy’s…not a Ross Dress for Less.  So Haggen’s failed.  Spectacularly.  Kind of like all of the local shoppers said it would.  Meanwhile, those of us in the neighborhood were left without our grocery store.

To many of us in our early childhood, Sesame Street’s Mr. Hooper exemplified the importance of the local grocer.  There was even a Fisher Price little person “Mr. Hooper” in our Sesame Street play sets.  He was a pretty big deal.  Not as big as Cookie Monster, of course, but big enough to be immortalized in a chokable plastic toy.  He was a person in our neighborhood – one that we might meet, walking down the street – and as such, gave us a foundation for what community looked like.  Grocery shopping is part of the fabric of our communal lives.  We don’t homestead and grow all of our own food here.  Grocery shopping is literally essential to our survival.  And I would contend that the community aspect of it is just as important.  It’s our neighborhood.  Our village. 

So when that community disappears, it’s upsetting.  Not just in the, “I don’t want to have to learn the layout of a new store” kind of upsetting.  But the “What the hell is going to happen to the people, who I care about, who worked here? Where will they go? What happens to our people?” kind of upsetting.  So the VONS/Haggen’s store sat empty.  For months.  My fellow shoppers and I had to find different places to shop.  And that’s what they were – just places to shop.  Going from weekly planned shopping trips at our VONS to shopping wherever and whenever felt completely unsettling: Trader Joe’s with its horrific parking and uber long lines; Walmart with its sketchy produce, questionable meat and even worse lines; and Albertsons where the prices always seemed far too high despite their “deals.”  But we’ve done it.  Had to.  Wasn’t really a choice.  We COULD drive across town to the VONS that remained open, see some of our relocated grocery store employees (but not all),  be comforted in the layout and get the items that only VONS carried.  But that was not always possible or practical. 

Until.

The sign went up in January: “Coming Soon: VONS”

Oh, the joy.  The happiness.  The sense that the universe was righting itself – turning back on its preferred axis.  To know that I could, once again, park in the 3^rd spot of the 4^th row and walk straight to what I might need, AND say hello to people who had been helping me feed my family for 18 years…WONDEROUS! Not sure how they averted the FTC anti-trust thing…don’t really care.  VONS was coming back!

And that is how I found myself (and 2 other loyal VONS shopper friends) in the parking lot of our local, community VONS at 8 am on a Tuesday morning.  Giddy.  Like dance in the parking lot giddy… which, of course, I did.  And take Selfies.  And post on social media.  Because we are THAT happy about our world feeling right again.  Once inside, we anxiously looked for our people.  Through the sea of employees, we only recognized a few of them.  Disappointing…a bit.  But we were assured later, that many of them were coming back and those who weren’t actually had been offer positions at closer to home locations.  We met the President of VONS, Lori, who personally thanked us for being there.  We quickly let her know that *we* were the thankful ones.  I saw an employee who I know got laid off by Albertsons, and had been commuting to a store in Bakersfield (!) and now is at this VONS.  A store less than a mile away from his home.  This.  This is why I am happy.  This is why the re-opening is a big deal to me: this store opening affects the lives of the people I share community with.

VONS is the place where I could go on Sundays, escape my family, and have alone time for an hour while shopping.  It’s the place that was open for cough medicine late at night when a kid was really sick.  Or get milk at 6:30am.  It’s where I could buy diapers, baby food, Capri Sun, Gatorade, power bars and beer.  VONS is Grandma Betty Jean – and birthday cakes and candles for every birthday no matter how old.  VONS is the Charles Von der Ahe funded library at Loyola Marymount University where I spent many, many hours in college.  VONS is peach-pineapple salsa and ILLY coffee.  VONS is the place where I know all the checkers.  VONS is Tony, whose widow we met in the meat department yesterday.  VONS is a bag of free groceries to loyal customers… like me. 

And to the mockers and laughers in my life who think I am “silly” with my devotion? Well, you just don’t get it.  And until you do my job, you can’t understand it.  So I can (mostly) forgive your ignorance.  But I don’t think *you* will be getting free groceries anytime soon…

#vonsforlife

2015 Year End Review

I wrote a Christmas letter this year, but the computer decided to eat the document when it got shut down.  I couldn’t muster up the holiday strength needed to re-write the thing and I didn’t send one out.  It was a small absence, it seemed, and one that most of my received Christmas cards seem to share.  Christmas letters have gone by the wayside – perhaps to join the other old-fashioned means of communication a la the telegram, the answering machine, and anything in general of needing a stamp to be replaced by the immediate updates on social media.

As I was putting the annual Santa photo into the Christmas binder – this year each child adorned not in red and green, but proudly displaying their individual alma maters - I was struck by the emptiness of the 2015 entry with its lack of letter.  So here I sit, on the eve of 2016, composing some highlights of this current – for a few more hours – year.  Like many wise editors, I have outsourced some of the work.  And I find it quite a reflection of the current times in how my children have chosen to respond to my request for their list of 2015.

This review started, unknowingly, with Colin and his post to Facebook this morning.  Colin still uses Facebook.  He turned 21 this year – and is just old enough in his generation to still use this media platform.  Or perhaps it is due to his busy schedule and general lack of desire to learn and use another social digital outlet.  He shared that he is the president of Tau Beta Pi, engineering honor society at CPP and is working on his Senior Project in Mechanical Engineering.  He attended many Engineering conferences this year, travelling to Illinois and Rhode Island.  He has scored 2 internships and is currently employed by Edison, where he puts in at least 20 hours a week on top of full time classes in his 4^th and final full year at Cal Poly Pomona.    He is contemplating the future: graduation, job, and grad school down the line.   He hopes to get an apartment, strengthen relationships and continue to travel in the new year.

Aidan met my request for a recap with a text.  I am, quite frankly, slightly worried to know which social outlets Aidan uses.  I suspect something quite dark and hidden in the internet world.  His update text, which I quote:

            Got accepted to nevada, went cliff jumping with Joe, Went skydiving with dad, finished igetc and csuge at coc, went to fallout boy and wiz khalifa concert, paid my way to chatauqua on a red eye, grew a man bun, numerous art projects (dragon, Cajon, dads coasters, wolf mural), started at Nevada and passed all classes, drove there and back.

Having Aidan at the University of Nevada has been a big change for our family.  We saw Colin quite a bit when he was/is away at school.  We see Aidan only on major holidays.  The house is very quiet and it’s been a big adjustment for all of us.  Some of us (me) took his absence a little harder than others (Ed, who took over Aidan’s room.)

Julia uses twitter as her social media of choice.  She did write out a very nice list for me, but for the purposes of brevity, I will recap via tweet:  “Rt your 2k15”

Met your current significant other 

Got your license [she gets to drive the minivan]

Went to Niagara Falls [this summer on our family reunion trip to New York]

Won an award [high school soccer co-defender of the year]

Had a sweet sixteen [soccer team kidnap breakfast and dinner with friends in Santa Monica]

Got your braces off

Hosted an exchange student [Tanja, technically lives next door, but has become a close friend]

I will add that she is taking a huge course load this junior year in high school and has managed to earn a 4.5 GPA.  I will take a soupçon of credit, as a broken right arm from an October soccer game injury left her right hand in a cast, thereby necessitating a homework scribe – moì.  A broken foot in January and a badly sprained ankle in May left her in casts and boots.  We are crossing fingers for an injury free 2016.  A final highlight was 2 week Medical School camp with her grandfather in Florida this summer.

Edwin handed me a chronological list on notebook paper.  He is not on any social media.  He is, however, very well acquainted with Netflix.  Attached to this handwritten list was the speech he wrote (with a little help from Aidan) for his 6^th grade promotion ceremony. 

January            Squidwards [soccer team] lost at regional playoffs

February          Help buy and install Dad’s awesomesauce chair [Barca-lounger]

March             Last Math Field Day competition

April                3 qualification classes…

May                 …2^nd Degree Black Belt testing

June                 fairwell [sic] to Highlands Elementary

July                  1^st time the Danahys, Stewarts and Pernsteiners were together since Ellie’s and Drew’s wedding

August             1^st day of 7^th grade at Arroyo Seco and 1^st practice and game with Team En Fuego, 3 day Harry Potter Marathon

September      1^st and only loss by scorched Orange [rival soccer team]

October           turned 13

November       Scarlet Fever

December       San Diego with Gramma Lee, Papa Paul and Liam

My year included probably saving my mom’s life – as she was having a heart attack at the time and someone – ahem- got her convinced to call an ambulance; running the non-profit organization that I co-founded to provide support and funds to the local high school; visiting Pittsburgh; getting new carpet in the whole house – and the amazing amount of work it entailed; leaving the elementary school after 16 years as an involved parent; working another wedding; attending 26 live comedy, music and theater productions this year – THE BEST of which was Celine Dion in Vegas….life changing; reconnecting with old friends; joining not one, but TWO wine clubs; visiting Cleveland…twice and Tucson only once; and saying goodbye to fertility forever.   

Brian helped coach Julia’s club soccer team to second place in league this year.  And also took over as coach of Ed’s soccer team, a team that refuses to die.  January will see us on the field for the whole month of weekends.  Soccer took much of Brian’s time this fall – often 3+ hours at a time after work some days.  He did enjoy his Notre Dame football and is currently in Arizona with Colin and Aidan on a boys’ football bowl week vacation.  We all enjoyed our trip to New York and Lake Chatauqua- Brian did a lot of the driving of the boat – and getting the boat (and kids aboard the vessel) safely to shore during a huge storm on the lake.   Brian got an iphone this year – and enjoys face timing on it.  That’s as close to any social media as he will get.  We said goodbye to Baxter in July and hello (but not the Adele $800 Staples’ Center tickets kind of “Hello”) to new spin-off company Baxalta. 

So I’ll post this review on my blog – my social media of choice – and print it out to fill the void in the Christmas book.  And that’s a wrap to 2015, a most wonderfully full year.   

Hope you enjoy this, Meg.  I did it mostly for you. 

Teenagers

Today someone asked me how many teenagers I had. 

“Too many,” was my response.

My youngest child hit 13 last Friday.  When my oldest turned 13, I had a bit of a meltdown.  I myself had recently turned 37 – a number I considered, at the time, too close to 40.  Having a teenager put me over the edge, so to speak.  I was officially “old” and I didn’t take kindly to this milestone.  I comforted myself with the fact that I still had a child, in fact many children, who were not teens.  The distinction was necessary to me. 

My children’s teen years so far have proved to be just about as difficult as I expected them to be.  Not horrific.  Not a cake walk.  In our house we have combated attitudes, body odors, messy rooms, car accidents, defiance, overuse of the word “like,” ambivalence and even some angst.  The social and friend stuff is always hard with the teens: such a difficult time that I remember with painful clarity from my own life.  Truly one of the hardest parts of parenting is watching your kids hurt by other people.  I have to believe that the pain makes them stronger.  I have to hope that the pain doesn’t make them harder.  I’m here to help model channeling the hurt into something positive and not something destructive.  Sometimes I succeed.

The frank teen sex talks have had a different twist with every kid.  I know now that the best talks happen in the car – all eyes forward.  No question is off limits, and I generally throw in too much information.  Enough to scare them.  But also enough to teach them.  Always trying to maintain the distance I think needs to be maintained: I am their mother, not their friend.  My latest bit of wisdom to one of my not-to-be-named teenagers was, “I am on a need to know basis.  Like you doctor.  If it isn’t something you would tell your doctor, then don’t tell me” with the hopes that the shock-value details will be reined in.  This bit of instruction is tailored to a specific child – like most of my conversations with my children.  I hope that by the time they reach the teen years, I have come to know them well enough to have the kind of productive conversations unique to each of them.  It’s definitely not one size fits all.

My youngest turning into a teenager has been harder to accept than the first born turning 13.  Because with it came this realization:

                                              

I no longer have small children.  

I haven’t fully grasped this concept yet.  It’s been 22 years since I first discovered I was pregnant.  So for 21+ years …I’ve had a small or small-ish child.   Not having a “child” feels less like a chapter ending and more like a whole library closing.   For almost half of my life, I had a baby or child in tow.  Half. Of. My. Life.  And now the last one is a teenager.  And I know what that means.  I’m going to blink, and he’ll be gone.  Off discovering college and a whole new exciting world.

And I’ll be 50 when that happens.  Which to my 37 year old self is exceptionally old.  Even to my 45 year old self, 50 seems old. 

Almost as old as having teenagers.

Family Goodbyes

My boys said goodbye to each other on Monday night.  It was after a lovely celebratory meal for

Colin’s 21^st birthday.  He, of course, had pizza.  The rest of us had lovely authentic Italian dishes.  After the blowing out of the candle on the obligatorily proffered piece of house tiramisu, we all got up to say our goodbyes.  Pictures were taken.  Julia’s annual hug given to Colin, offered once each year on birthdays – his relative stiffness matched only by her uncomfortableness at being touched (Edwin clearly received ALL of the hugging genes that completely skipped Julia’s gene pool.)  And then it was time for the big boys to say goodbye – embracing like young men do – quick bear hug followed by the back thump.  Colin wanted me to take a picture of them.  Hugging.  Briefly perplexed, I tried to snap a photo on the phone that wouldn’t cooperate with a flash.  The hug happened again.  And then again.  

“See you at Thanksgiving,” they say to each other.  And I feel a little twinge. 

“This is the longest we will have ever been apart,” they say to me.  And I feel like I have been punched in the stomach.

Colin will start his 4^th year of college in September.  Colin chose a school 65 miles away.  In Los Angeles.  Which, to be fair, could either be 1 hour away or 3 ½  hours away, depending on traffic and the time of day.  We saw him often during that first year away from home. 

Aidan will start his second year of college on Monday – his junior year, according to the transcripts and thanks to taking so many college classes in high school – in a different state.  He will be 8 hours away.  More if the Grapevine closes due to fire or snow.   He won’t come home on weekends to do his laundry.  The next time we see him will be Thanksgiving.

Our family has done the goodbye thing.  The move to college thing.  The changing of the family dynamic thing.  We have morphed from a house of 6 to 5 and then 6 again on weekends and school breaks.  We are not new to the changing numbers and rearranging rooms in the house.

This change feels different.  Half of my children will no longer be living with me.  My boys will go months without seeing each other.  Months.  This seems inconceivable to me: like Vizzini inconceivable.   Julia no longer has a big brother around.  Edwin no longer has a tormentor/mentor around.  I no longer have another driver around.  My family will be scattered.  My family will not be together under the same roof.  The rightness of this milestone feels so very, very wrong.

We will rearrange rooms again – Edwin to truly get his own room for the first time in his life.  No older brother to share with on weekends/vacations.  When they are home again, even if only briefly together, the big boys will share the room they once shared when we first moved into this house 17 years ago.  (And of course, Aidan wants to turn it into a “man cave”.)

Funny thing these full circles.  I will look at that back room and see my 2 red headed boys.  The ones who people literally crossed the street to look and smile at when they were little.  I will see their sleeping faces and their rambunctious awake ones.  Those are the faces I will see when I take them to college.  Those are the faces I see when I say goodbye.

What I Learned as an Elementary School Parent

Tomorrow will end the 16 school years I have spent as an elementary school parent.  I will most certainly be shedding a few tears: some proud, some sad, and some even filled with joyful relief at an ending that’s been a long time coming. 

I will miss being an elementary school parent.  It has been at least a part-time job over the last decade and a half: room parent, volunteer, parent teacher group board member, site council president etc.  It all took time and energy.  And like a seasoned player, just maybe a bit past her prime, I leave it with some hard-earned confidence, maturity and a little relief.

Along the way it was impossible not to pick up a few things. I leave with the following knowledge.

Always go straight to the source.  I learned this embarrassingly early in my parent life.  Kindergarten with my oldest son, 1999– first week of school.  I questioned the teacher’s discipline technique….to the principal.   Of course she found out about my “complaint” and as she was a seasoned teacher, she approached me about it the very next day.  She explained, thoroughly, what I may have misinterpreted. She also made it pretty clear – without outright saying it – that I should have come to her first.  She was gracious about it.  She taught me how to be the kind of parent who works with teachers, as part of a team – not on opposite sides.  From all I have heard from my teacher friends, and from my children’s teachers too, one of the most taxing parts of the teaching profession today is dealing with parents who don’t support you. 

Kindergarten teachers know everything about you and your family. There are very few secrets.  Young children can be brutally honest.  And they see and hear more than you can even imagine.  So treat your teacher with great kindness.  Chances are, she knows some good dirt on you.

Little children have no qualms about farting in public.  Ever. 

Kids can be mean.  First grade boys, I’m talking about you.  Fifth grade girls? Yep, you too. There is a reason why “Lord of the Flies” is still taught today in high school.  Kids can be downright nasty.  Part of being a parent is to dry those tears caused by hurt feelings and exclusion.  It is a part of life that no parent *wants* to teach – but it happens to everyone.  If it hasn’t happened yet….it will. 

Kids can be extraordinarily compassionate.  The child who doesn’t speak in kindergarten? She will have friends who help her.  The child who has braces on her legs and can’t run? She will have friends who make up games that she can play.   The 6^th grader who doesn’t have a partner for the field trip? Someone will step up and step in with grace.

Nothing is ever accomplished by criticizing a child to his or her mother.  Even if it is “constructive” criticism. 

Groups of women can get anything done.  On a shoe-string budget.  In a small amount of time.  They can move mountains – or make them out of paper as decorations for the school play.  Nothing is impossible. 

Groups of women do not work well together.  Yes, I said it.  Yes, it’s true. 

A love of reading cannot be taught.  Reading can be taught. Love of books can be fostered and encouraged, but love ultimately comes from within each child.  Not from the parent.

No Child Left Behind did not work.  And it is my belief that Common Core will not work either.

Children learn best in small groups and small teacher to student ratios. 

Never volunteer in the classroom after lunch.  There is a reason why the veteran 6^th grade teacher doused himself in heavy cologne for years: kids smell.  Kids smell bad.  Even little ones.  The combination of black asphalt smudges, little kid sweat and leftover lunch bag smell is too powerful a combination for one’s senses.

Let your first grader take ownership of the diorama.  Let your 5^th grader take ownership of the Science Project. They can do it.  Back off.  Let them work it out on their own.  I will admit that this is extra hard.  Especially if you are crafty.  It took me a LONG time to get this concept.  But the pride they feel will go farther than any need you have to control the project.

The crossing guard, janitors and lunch ladies are the unsung heroes of the elementary school world.

Make friends with the office manager.

Never attempt to understand the complex rules of four-square.  Just nod your head and fake your comprehension.

Morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up bring out the very worst in humanity.  For the love that is all good and true….leave home 5 minutes early.  Don’t ever be *that* parent.  You know the one.  The one who makes the U-turn in the school zone.  The one who doesn’t follow the valet rules (PULL.  ALL. THE. WAY. FORWARD. Junior will survive walking 10 extra steps!) The one who jaywalks and stops traffic.  (Dads….I’m looking at you.  Please use the crosswalks.  Please model this safe behavior.)  The one who parks in a red zone next to the safety cones – blocking traffic.  The one who doesn’t think the sign “No Student Drop Off – Faculty Only” applies to them. 

I will miss this elementary school.  I will miss the people in it.  I will miss helping kids learn how to use scissors, write their names and make a clay monster.  I will miss reading to them and giving make-up spelling tests.  I will miss the art projects and the plays.  The reading logs and the journals.  I will miss the connection that I had as a volunteer to my children at school. 

Tomorrow is a big day for our family.  We say goodbye to a piece of our collective lives – one of the few constants this growing and changing family has had.  Bittersweet.  All 16 years of it.