End of the School Year

High-fives, a pat on the back and random hugs mark the end to another school year.  This week is so different from those in my memory.  Physical anticipation fought with the relief from being finished with exams.   The thrill of months of solid sleeping late use to all be kicked off in a paper snow storm as students ran from the school building.  I am now on the other side.  Instead there is a flurry of last minute meetings, angry emails anxious to help little Johnny pass and writing the fifty page final exam with all the reviews and answer keys for each ability level.

Each year comes with greater speed.  The students, my children for a year, leave.  The few that return arrive as strangers.  Little chubby smooth faces full of braces are transformed into defined, angular adults.  The individual groups of stories have melted into a solid lump- no longer able to be pulled from the others.  This first shocked and saddened me when it first started to happen.  The mind making room for more clumping those you hold dear and letting the rest go. 

Introspection hits me every May.  I wish other situations in our life had such clear cut beginnings and ends.  We could look back at the last year as a platform to move forward for the  following year? Instead we have this jumble of restarts and half ends.  It is only months later that we ask ourselves why?  In life there is much rushing here doing, cleaning, getting, meeting but not just letting go.  This summer that will be my first order of business.

My goal- let go of the weight that I have carried and added to over the last 35 years.  Let go of the clutter that has consumed my house.  (Although I am not exactly a candidate for the show Hoarders it is still bad.)  Let go of the time killers that eat away at my life.  In all of this letting go- I will live.