Well, the chaos is still here with 3 grade school kids, 4 dogs, 2 parrots and a dirty little aquatic turtle that we absolutely love. As a matter of fact, my youngest just went off to full day school this week. The silence in our house is almost deafening, the entire zoo seems to be depressed that the energy of the children isn't here for 8 hours, or they are resting from a long ass summer, not sure which but it is quiet.
I remember my first day of first grade so vividly. Our neighbor took me to school and delivered me to my classroom. I started to cry and I remember her asking me why I was crying. I told her I felt badly for my mom because she was alone all day. She leaned down close to my face and looked me in the eye with a bit of humor and said 'Oh Jenny, your mom has been waiting a loooooong time for this day!' The neighbor and the teacher laughed together while I walked to my desk. I realized many years later that the humor wasn't in my tears, it was in the fact that I was the youngest of five girls with a seventeen year age gap, my mom literally had waited a loooooong time for that day.
Today I asked her if she was truly upset the day her youngest left her alone for 8 hours per day. There was silence on the other end and I at first thought the phone disconnected, then I thought perhaps she was crying and I felt a moment, a very brief moment, of guilt.
'Mom?' I asked.
'Yeah, oh yeah, I am here. I was just thinking, I enjoyed seeing you leave as much as I enjoyed seeing you come home.'
How's that for a diplomatic answer?
And so it goes!
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