School’s Out For Summer

Yesterday was the boys’ last day of school – it ended a week of mid-day parties and awards ceremonies and parades, all the Last Week of School pomp and circumstance.  At his awards ceremony earlier in the week, Jack received the A/B honor roll and a character award.  He grinned bashfully when his name was called, then did a little flailing dance and made a weird face.  It perfectly illustrated the battle between immaturity and grace that his seven year old self is experiencing.  A partner was mad at me for being late on an internal deadline, but I’m so glad I went to his awards ceremony anyway.  Jack saw that I was there.  The wolf that grows is the one you feed, right?

The Professor and I took turns attending the various events.  I caught the midday first grade ice cream party on Thursday, he did pickup duty for early release Friday, and a church party on Friday afternoon.  I grabbed the little boys at their end of year party later on Friday afternoon, and instead of going back to work, I took them home and set up the sprinkler in the backyard.  We sat on the porch and ate Nilla wafers, and the boys ran around in their swimsuits.  Full of cookies, we skipped dinner.  The sun didn’t set til nearly eight o’clock.

Craig was being a pill, so we gave him a bottle and put him to bed right at 7pm.  I read him his favorite books – Roadwork, and The Going to Bed Book.  I finish one, he hands me the other.  I finish that one, he hands me the first one.  He loves when we lay down on our backs and read – I hold the book in the air above our heads, and he points to the pictures.  Sometimes he will get bossy and yank it out of my hands, then hold it upside down and turn the pages and speak baby nonsense, ‘reading’ it to me.

So we did this a while and then I put him in his bed with his Baby (a singing gloworm my mother bought), and came downstairs.   The Professor and I lounged in the front room, reading magazines, and the boys played with their toys in the living room.  At 8:00 we realized it was pretty late, and we reluctantly got up to roust the boys and herd them up to bed.  We found them on the couch, lying lengthwise together, head to foot, like two inverted teardrops, like a yin-yang symbol, sound asleep.  Liam’s graduation balloon was floating above them, the end of the string brushing across their little boy hips.  They still had their glasses on.  We each took a boy – the Professor took Liam and I carried Jack up to bed, and it was so hard to do that I thought about the last time I will hold him.  It’s a day that’s coming soon – he is almost more than I can lift at this point.  

Summer has begun.