::: the homework issue :::

Since Monet has made the transition from home education to private school education, there has been one major issue that has been a challenge, and that has been the issue of homework. Almost every school evening has ended in tears, both his and mine. I know this is an old story for many of you, but after home educating for almost 20 years, it's a new one for me.

If you're struggling with the homework issue, too, there is a good, clear, easy to follow article about motivating children to do homework here.   After reading it, I see a lot of areas where I can improve and help Monet achieve his goals. Up until now, I have just been hoping that the motivation for doing his homework would kick in, that he would do it because he knows he has to, and he would go from hating the homework to finding fulfillment in completing it. The article gives some excellent tips on how to help kids do the work, including setting a mandatory "study time" whether the child has homework or not. Setting aside a period of time and a quiet space of their choice for the child, plus helping them come up with an organizational method of assigning priorities to their homework assignments gives them the structure they need to get the work done. I hope to implement some of these suggestions today, and would love to hear what has worked and not worked for you, too.

::: ideals :::

"Don't let your home become some terrible miniature copy of the school.  No lesson plans!  No quizzes!  No tests!  No report cards! Even leaving your child alone would be better:  at least they could figure out some things on their own." ~John Holt

I love reading John Holt, as I was reminded by this post by Tonia from Study in Brown. It sums up what I wish for in my idealistic educational fantasy-land. Why can't I make it work in my own life? Why does that kind of life tend to end up making me feel undisciplined and borderline negligent of my children's education?

And, is it just me, or does the word "ideals" connotate naive and impossible daydreams?

::: advice, please? :::

Well, the temptation is to ignore it, but I can't. Here's the truth: Monet isn't doing stellar in school.

For those just joining this ongoing saga, we made the family choice to put fourteen-year-old Monet into a private Christian school this year after a lifetime of home education. He was really causing some disruption at home, and we thought that maybe it was a combination of boredom and the need for more structure. Bo first brought up the idea to enroll Monet in school as a freshman, and my immediate reaction was, "No way. He's a sensitive kid, and I'm a sensitive mama, and I'm not sure either of us can handle the abrupt changes that a small private school will hold."

But upon presenting the idea to Monet, he was all for it. Excited, actually. He'd be able to play soccer, join choir, take private instrument lessons and participate in an art class. As the first day of school approached, he excitedly prepared, gathering supplies, shopping for school clothes, counting down the days, and waiting for the phone call from his soccer coach telling him when conditioning would start.

Somehow we got skipped over for the phone call regarding conditioning, so this boy showed up on the last day, not sure what to do, out of shape, and pretty shy. I think the confidence has kind of gone downhill since then.

Fast forward to now, end of first term, and his grades are less than impressive. I'd hoped that he would take the world by storm, or, at the very least, that he would thrive. Okay, I had at least hoped he would survive. And maybe he is surviving. But as I see it right now, I feel like we're both drowning.

And I guess a big part of my frustration is embarrassment. I really, really, really, really, really, really, really dread the judgment of others, and I feel that Monet's poor performance is just inviting the judgment down upon my quivering head. Why didn't I school him better? Why didn't I discipline him more? Love him more?

The other part of my frustration is that he seems to be doing just fine on the tests, and he's actually learning things, because he comes home and *tells* me what he's learning, but he's refusing to turn in homework, which is bringing down his grades tremendously. Why would a child do that? Why would a child sabotage his own grade by not turning in homework? One of the assignments is to draw a picture of Queen Mab, the faerie queen from Romeo and Juliet that Mercutio describes. Drawing. DRAWING! That's Monet's passion, his first love, his God-given talent! And, in spite of reminders and threats and pleas, he has not turned this drawing in! It's enough to stagger a mother's imagination, it is.


I don't want to be the angry, nagging mother, but I don't know how to get him to get the work done without grief. I feel like our homeschooling problems didn't disappear, they just got transferred to another location during the daytime and come back here at night. Plus, with the sports and other extra-curricular activities, there are nights he doesn't get home until after 10:00. How can a person get homework done after 10 when he has to be out the door in the morning by 6:30?

Sigh.

Sigh. Again.

I would love some advice, friends. I don't know where to go from here. 

::: oh no, i see a spider web and it's me in the middle :::

Since the girls are home again, and Monet is at school, we're back to our regular (what's that?) schedule with small chores, breakfast and Ambleside in the morning. We also began using Teaching Textbooks CDs on the computer for Sweetheart (age 10) and I've ordered Math U See for The Baby (who desperately needs a new pseudonym--any suggestions?) and am looking forward to getting started with that. The girls are also working on Explode the Code and Getty-Dubay handwriting. Sweetheart is continuing her work with Wordly Wise and some map reading workbooks.

On the brick-and-mortar school front regarding Monet...::sigh::. Another day, another argument. I received an e-mail from his history teacher saying that Monet is "doing well" on his tests but he's not turning in his homework. I have a simple explanation for that; he's not doing it. We have a major discussion about this every.single.night. Do any of you have any suggestions for motivating a teen to do his homework, or should we just back off and let him deal with whatever consequences that come with his actions (or lack of)? I do not want to sacrifice my relationship with my son over homework, yet I want him to gain discipline and get the most of this amazing education he's been given the opportunity to receive.

This week is going to be quite a busy one. Cleaning for a houseconcert on Friday night, soccer game tomorrow night, going to a play on Wednesday evening, making applesauce with Jill on Thursday, parent/teacher conferences on Thursday evening (and another soccer game), Shakespeare play on Friday morning, houseconcert Friday night, and then travel to PA for an open house for Houdin's training at the discipleship center on Saturday morning, before the rooster crows. I'm feeling more and more that I'm beginning to stretch myself too thin again with things like picking up the soccer sandwiches and houseconcerts and parent/teacher conferences. My doggone tomatoes are rotting on the vines, dangit, because I've been too flippin' busy to get them picked and processed.

For tomorrow: look for a review of the soon-to-be-released newest book by Donald Miller, including the chance to win a copy.

::: a letter to my angry son :::

Dear Son,

I'm not sure whose fault it is that we keep having these stupid arguments. I'm not sure it matters who's at fault. All I know is that I don't like it, and being upset with you, or you being upset with me, completely rips my heart out.

The truth is that I'm just as confused about this whole school thing as you are. Most of what you're doing on a daily basis goes completely against my educational philosophies, my hopes and aspirations for you as a person, as a whole person.  But those are ideals, and who's to say they're worth anything? Some days I believe in them. Some days I feel like a failure.

Someone told me recently that anger is a manifestation of fear. When I remember that, I remember that I think it's true. I get angry with you because I'm afraid I'm failing you, or I'm afraid that I'm doing the wrong thing, or I'm afraid I'm making bad choices. When faced with the decision to help you with your homework or make you do it on your own, I become paralyzed. All of these thoughts go screaming through my brain; If I help him, is that doing him a disservice? How am I supposed to know what his teacher wants? What does it mean when he says he doesn't understand? Why am I teaching these concepts at home--isn't that what's he spends the whole day in school for? Does any of this really matter? I mean, really. When is he going to have to know what happened to the Donner Party? How will that apply to his life, unless he becomes a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

But then I think about the struggles we were having here at home, how I was putting so much energy into getting you to do your lessons that I wasn't giving enough attention to the girls and their lessons. So much of the problem stemmed from your stubbornness, your unwillingness to simply do the work set in front of you and your insistence of doing whatever you could to get out of the work instead of just doing the work. Why? Why do you do that? Wouldn't it be better, more peaceful, if you would just trust that the people who are teaching you love you and want you to succeed? Wouldn't you feel better about yourself if you were using your energy to do your best work instead of using that energy to get out of work?

I guess you come by that honestly, though. I often feel so overwhelmed that I don't want to even try to complete a task, no matter how necessary it is. So I understand. And then, after I lose my patience with you, I think about that, and I think, "Man, I could have handled that a little better." But I also think, "Man, he could have handled that better." It's a two-way street, see? And I'm not a child psychologist or an educational expert. I'm just a mom. I'm a confused, frustrated, heartbroken mom, and I'm just trying to get through this thing, too, with the minimal amount of damage to either of us.

Because I just want to save the relationship. I don't want you to remember your teens years as the years your mom hated you (because I don't) or that you hated your mom (because I hope you don't), and I don't like this stress. If I could do it and would know that it was okay, I'd pull you out of school and let you stay home and create roblox universes all day long. If God would wake me up in the middle of the night and say, "Yeah. That. Go ahead and do that. It will all work out just fine. Trust me. I have a plan for that boy." It would just be nice, God, if you would clue me in on that plan so I could help out a little bit. Right now, I feel like a loser of a mom, and you're not really helping so much, you know?

It certainly doesn't help that you're getting a nice amount of exposure to the F word from your classmates during the school day, or that a good portion of your classes are spent dealing with difficult kids who bring cell phones to school and mouth off to teachers. But did I really expect any differently, just because you're going to a Christian school? Well, yeah. Actually, I did. I expected a higher standard of behavior from the students, and I guess I expected an educational philosophy that's much more like mine.

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood. Maybe I need to back off for a little while. What I want right now is just to go hug you and do your homework for you and make everything better again. But that won't make things better.

I'm afraid, when it comes down to it, that you have a few lessons to learn about responsibility and perseverance and paying attention and taking pride in your work. You can only get to those by getting through what you're going through now. I can't hand them to you. You have to go get them yourself.

I'll be here when you've decided to move forward.

I love you,

Mom

::: we'll dress him up warmly and we'll send him to school :::

Well, here I am, going on Day 3 of having two children who've left home, Bard away at college and Houdin at training for his year-long trip to Africa. Did I really just write that? Is my son going to *live* in Africa for a year?

Wow.

I was once accused of being "provincial," and, while I don't think I am, it's still pretty amazing to me when my kids leave the country, considering that the only country I've ever gone to is Canada. So, yeah, I'm pretty excited about it, but I'm also nervous.

But even more than that, I find it so strange to be without two of my arms. This week has been especially strange since I have no children in my home during the day. I know I keep saying that, but it's like, Oh. My. Gosh. This house is SO weird without kids hopping all over the place!

And I'd like to say that it's cleaner, but it's not. I've been spending so much time running around that I haven't really had any time to clean, and that was one of my top priorities. Maybe tomorrow, huh? I guess other things are just more important.

I met with Monet's math teacher, counselor and tutor today about his difficulty with math and his general assimilation into the school environment. I felt pretty good about the meeting, and I felt good about his participation in tonight's soccer game, but after having a good talk with him on the way home from soccer, I'm more frustrated with the way other kids are behaving. I had thought, naively, perhaps, that the adjustment into this school would be easier because it's a Mennonite school, and there would be a strong focus on care and compassion. Unfortunately, some of the kids, particularly some of the Mennonite kids, are pretty disappointing to me. Monet shared with me tonight that when they're on the soccer bus, he sits alone because the other kids don't want to sit with him. One kid told him he couldn't sit in the empty seat next to him, and one kid actually asked someone else to trade places with Monet so he wouldn't have to sit with him. Monet told me that he feels like he has to apologize to the other kids when there's nowhere else to sit and he has to sit next to someone. He feels like he has to *apologize* to them for them having to sit next to him! The best advice I could come up with was to tell him to find something to do that he could do alone, like reading a book or playing with his iPod. But he didn't have his iPod tonight on the soccer bus, he said, because he let one of the other kids play with it on the way home. It made me want to hug him, but it made me want to cry. He would never think of treating someone the way these kids are treating him, and he's even going so far as to share with them one of his prized possessions. I don't really understand what they find so repulsive about him. He's smart, he's talented, and he's funny. I suppose it's because he has struggled with math and soccer, and so he's one of the weak ones, the low man on the totem. I pray that he finds a friend who will accept and appreciate him for who he is. Doesn't everyone deserve that?

I guess the comfort comes in the knowledge that people make fun of what they don't understand. I guess right now, Monet isn't even human to these kids, doesn't even have feelings, because they don't know him. Part of me wants them to know him, and part of me thinks, "Wow. You don't really deserve this boy's friendship." Today, one of the kids I had thought was going to be a friend, walked by Monet's locker and called him a failure. Monet said it was a joke, that the boy was only kidding, but why kid like that? Why? And since this is a boy on Monet's soccer team, doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of team sports?

And I suppose that's another reason I'm feeling frustrated. Monet *chose* to play soccer. He's only one of 32 boys in the whole school who have chosen to play soccer this season. It's been a hard adjustment for him, but he has stuck with it, and he's improving. He wanted to quit, but in the end, he chose to stick with it. He goes to every practice, every game, and sits through the varsity games, too. And yet he would be less ridiculed had he chosen not to play a sport at all. It's almost like there's a kind of humiliation and punishment that comes from putting in the effort. If you're not good enough, the message seems to be, don't even try. We don't want you.

But he's continuing on, and I'm proud of him for it.

I wish human beings would just learn to behave, to be kind to one another, and to treat other people with the same respect with which they'd like to be treated. You'd think that, in a Christian school, a school of Monet's own denomination, that wouldn't be too much to ask.

Let's hope it's not.

::: wouldn't you give your hand to a friend? :::

If you know my boy, Monet, send him a note or give him a call today to encourage him. He has had a hard time transitioning from home education to private school. His class is a small one, and a close-knit one, from what I understand, and considering that he's not very outgoing or talkative, I think he's having a hard time breaking in to the circle. He's having a rough time of math class, though he's certainly making improvements, and he claims to hate English and History. Soccer is hard for him, too, but he's sticking with that, too, and making improvements.

I get frustrated with school kids sometimes. Tonight at the soccer game, I was a little disappointed by the way some of the kids were making fun of and laughing at other kids, and the hyper-focus on the boyfriend/girlfriend thing, and the borderline foul language and sexist comments (in a socially conscious Christian school). I was also frustrated by how much value was assigned to success in sports over success in other areas of life. Monet is an excellent artist, but there's no art class for the freshmen this year. None of the administration seems bothered by this, but I wonder how they would react if I told them that there was no soccer/tennis/baseball/basketball for their child's year.

I want Monet to succeed, and I want him to make friends, and I want him to be healthy, but moreover, I want him to be happy and to serve God fully and with a pure, humble heart. While I'm hoping he can gain the tools he needs to do that while attending this school, I'm a little worried that he won't, that he'll be pulled under the current of the unhealthy trends of his peers and be swept away from the gifts that God has given to him because there's no value being assigned to it by his peers and mentors.

So, if you think about it, give him a call or drop him a note today.

::: at midnight :::

Dogs are barking.
Drums are beating.
Piano is pounding.
Fan is blowing.
Laundry is waiting.
I am stressing.
I am stressing.
I am stressing.

School is frustrating.
Homework is baffling.
Sunday's approaching;
Houdin will be leaving.
Laundry is waiting.
I am stressing.
I am stressing.
I am stressing.

Book is inspiring.
God is amazing.
Life is so challenging.
Morning is coming.
Bus will be waiting.
I am stretching.
I am stretching.
I am stretching.

::: thicket dweller and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad morning :::

It's 6:33 a.m.

How can the day suck already?

I'll tell you how--when you're the mother of children who feel that they're failing.

Late last night, before bed, after Monet was sound asleep, I signed on to Edline, the school's academic tracking system. It's a system that has great potential, except that I keep believing that the teachers are actually using it, so if I sign on and find that there's no homework or class notes for Monet, I believe there's actually no homework or class notes. It doesn't occur to me that a school system would set up, maintain, and point parents to a system that some of the teachers use and some of them don't.

Apparently, however, when it's time to put up weekly progress reports, they do.

And Monet is failing History.

HISTORY!

How can a person FAIL History? Math, I can understand. English? Not in this house, buddy. But HISTORY?

One of my biggest pet peeves in life is that someone would make history boring, would give a kid a list of names and dates and measure their success in the class by whether or not they can memorize them. That is totally not what history is about. History is US! It's the story of where we came from, what mistakes have been made, what successes have been celebrated. It's about human beings, and triumph, and tragedy, and passion, and drive, and LIFE. How can a person hate History? How can a person fail History?

Well, I'll tell you one way a person can hate it. If, like I did, they have a History teacher who was only there because he was the boys' basketball coach and you couldn't be a basketball coach unless you taught a class, so he taught History, and he didn't care about it, and he leered at the high school girls, and he was totally and completely boring. Completely.

Now, here's my son, and I'm thinking, "Heck, it's twenty-five years later. Surely they've made some advancements in the training of History teachers," but then I log on to this sometimes used, sometimes not Edline and I see that he's not just failing, but he's REALLY failing. So, while he's dead asleep, I pull out his five-subject binder and flip to the History tab. Page after page after page of photocopied worksheets with fact upon fact and obscure name upon obscure name that they're supposed to define and identify.

He's only been in class for THREE WEEKS! Each of these people listed lived an ENTIRE LIFE! How in the world can you cover one whole sheet of names, one whole sheet of lives in THREE WEEKS? How can you absorb that, let alone CARE about them?

I guess this is the Charlotte Mason in me coming out. I don't understand the need to cram a bunch of facts into a kid that he won't remember, won't care about, when you can spend some good quality time on a few key things and really give them a passion for them.

It doesn't help that, when we were trying to make the decision to send Monet to this small private school, people assured us that he'd do fine. People have been assuring us all along the way that he'll get plenty of help, that he'll succeed, that the staff won't let him fail. And in spite of my worries and concerns and careful questions and requests for extra help and extra patience, he's struggling in Math, he doesn't like English (be still my HEART!), and he's failing in History.

Sigh.

Then here's me, carefully composing two e-mails--one to the Math teacher and one to the History teacher--asking what we can do to help Monet succeed, and when I press "send," I find that Edline has "logged me out" because my account had been "inactive" for a period of time. Writing, I think, is an activity. It's pretty active. No logout warning, no autosave. Two carefully composed e-mails...gone.

So I'm feeling pretty upset about this, right, when I read a note on facebook from my college-aged daughter, who apparently bombed at an improv and didn't make it into her school's production of Into the Woods, which she really, really, really wanted, and who's feeling like a failure in her Media Production class, and I find that she's really struggling right now, that she's really feeling down and rejected and pretty much like a failure, and, as I read the things she's upset about, I wonder how much of it I planted in that head of hers--her need to be funny, her need to hide her emotions, her need for perfection.

Then I start beating myself up, and I wonder, "Why didn't I plant confidence? Why didn't I plant resilience? And God! Why didn't I plant the need for God?!?"

And so here it is, 6:49 a.m., and it's a sucky day already.

So I'm going back to bed, and I hope when I wake up, the new day won't be as sucky.

But then I remember that I have an appointment today to have an ultrasound done on my apparently failing gall bladder. Today.

9/9/09 at 9:00 a.m.

I could use a lift, God, okay?

::: i get a kick out of you :::

Monet has had some pretty big life adjustments these past couple of weeks. Just a short time ago, he, Bo and I made the decision to send him to a local private school for his freshman year. After fourteen years of being at home full-time, this is quite a new experience for him.

Part of the experience has been participating on the Junior Varsity soccer team at his school, his first experience with playing on a sports team since his venture into little league baseball years ago, which left him feeling as if he'd never want to play team sports again. The coaches were in it for the win, and didn't really seem to have time to teach a new player the rules, encourage him, get him on track with something that could boost his confidence. The players were nasty, snobbish and insulting, cliquish and cruel. In a nation where obesity is a major physical and emotional health problem, sports situations such as that don't do much for encouraging physical activity.
It's been a big challenge, but his coaches and teammates have been very encouraging and patient. It's been a good experience so far.

Yesterday evening, he played his second game, and, while he's not the strongest player, he played to the best of his ability, even with some allergies and wheezing wailing on his body.

We've worked hard to encourage him to continue through the season. Friends and family have helped encourage him, too. We're hoping that, by the end of the soccer season, he'll have a great sense of accomplishment for struggling through something, and he'll be a better person for having completed it.

And I probably will be, too.

::: feels like the sun going down on me :::

"It may surprise parents who have not given much attention to the subject to discover also a code of education in the Gospels, expressly laid down by Christ. It is summed up in three commandments...Take heed that ye OFFEND not––DESPISE not––HINDER not––one of these little ones."

~Charlotte Mason

Are you out there? Because if you are, I'd love to hear your input on this one. What would it mean to "offend not, despise not, and hinder not one of these little ones?"

I am a mother frustrated by her teenage son's lack of self-motivation and self-governance. Tonight I am overwhelmingly disappointed with his ability to seek out injustices done to him, his proficiency in finding fault in others, but his habit of avoiding the responsibilities he has been given.

Simple things, really. Mom and Dad will be gone at small group for three hours. In that three-hour time frame, you will take a shower, put on your pajamas, finish your homework, pack your school bag, pack your gym bag, and set out your clean clothes for tomorrow. While we were gone, I accidentally left my cell phone in the car. Upon returning to the car, there were eight, yes EIGHT, phone calls from this boy, with messages indicating that older brother was being a jerk, that older brother was not letting him watch the DVD he wanted to watch, that older brother was still being a jerk EIGHT calls. FOUR messages. ONE frustrated mama, because when I returned home, the message-leaver hadn't done ANY of the things he'd been instructed to do, As a result, he lost the privilege of breakfast out with mom before catching the school bus.

Upon being reprimanded for his behavior, his response? "This is the kind of thing that would make me quit school," which resulted in an even stronger talking-to.

What breaks this cycle? And how does a parent interrupt such self-loathing, vindictive patterns of behavior without offending, despising or hindering the child?

My response tonight was outrage, anger and indignation.

Ephesians 4:26 says, "In your anger do not sin; Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry."

I'm not sure if I sinned in my anger tonight. I raised my voice. I expressed my deep disappointment with this boy's failure to do very clearly given, fair instructions without coercion or supervision. I became angry with the innocent in the situation.

So, yes, I suppose I did sin. And, yes, the sun is down (it was already down when I'd developed this anger), and I'm still angry.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll make it through this thing, this parenting of teenage boys, alive.

Heaven help me.

And you, dear reader, can help me, too.

I'd love to hear your feedback.

::: made the bus in seconds flat :::

I was pretty much a dead woman until I realized that the annoying "blat, blat, blat" crashing through the wall of my dreams was the persistent nagging of the alarm clock. I forced my eyes open, tried in vain to see the blue numbers, then flopped back down.

"What time is it?" I asked my husband Bo, who sleeps closest to the clock and had just succeeded in shutting it up.
"Muttermuttermutter," he muttered.
"What?"
"Muttermuttermutter!" he remuttered.
"I'm sorry," I tried to say this very gently, "but I didn't understand you," though I kind of thought I did understand him, in some strange way, and I didn't like what I thought he said.
"mmmmmMMMMMGHrzZZ! I said, 'It's SiiiiiiX. Twentyyyyyyyy. TwooooooooooooOOOOOoooo!'"
"What?!?" Now, in case you think me an idiot, I heard him that time. The final "what" was a rhetorical question, because it wasn't what I was expecting to hear. It wasn't at all what I wanted to hear.

I jumped out of bed, ran down the stairs (which is pretty hard to do, considering that it's usually necessary to have access to one's ability to see in order to run down stairs with any measure of success), hollering (or at least muttering incoherently in a slightly loud voice), and shook Monet awake.

All of this because the alarm had been changed.

Because, see, Bo's morning hours change depending on what his job duties are that day. And even though we have two alarms on our clock, we seem to only use one. And while I had set the alarm to wake up at 5:45 to get Monet up, allow him time to get dressed, eat breakfast, gather his soccer things, and drive to the bus stop, Bo had re-set the alarm for 6:20 in order to give himself enough time to get clothes on and leave for work.

In other words, we were going to be late.

For Monet's second day of school. Second. Day. What kind of mother lets her son be late for the bus on his second day of school?

Who's late for their second day of anything?

Monet was a good sport. When I shook his sleeping body and screamed into his sleeping ears, he awoke, jumped into his clothes, and let me shove a bagel and some grapes into his mouth. His school and gym had been packed the night before. I threw him into the car--no dragging a comb across his head or a brush across his teeth--and sped like a demon to the bus stop, approaching the parking lot three minutes before the scheduled pick-up time.

Where the bus was waiting.

I pushed Monet out of the speeding car, propelling him toward the exiting bus where he grabbed the front crossing arm and held on for dear life.

Okay, he leaped out of the moving car directly onto the bus stairs.

Okay, I brought the car to a complete, albeit abrupt, stop, and he quickly opened the door and ran to the stationary bus, receiving a polite "hello" from the smiling bus driver.

Fortunately for us, the bus route was changed, and Monet's is now the first stop on the route. The driver was waiting for some other students, so someone else was making him wait. Not us.

Today, I bought the boy a travel toothbrush, hairbrush and some Clif Bars and shoved them in his backpack, just in case.

And I set the second alarm.

::: first day :::

He couldn't sleep last night.
His allergies were bothering him this morning.
But he was ready nonetheless.
His button-down shirt and khakis were laid out,
And his soccer gear was packed,
And he got a good breakfast
of scrambled sour-cream eggs,
whole wheat toast
and cold watermelon.
So what if he had to go find another pair of socks
because he couldn't find the pair he'd found
last night?
So what if he forgot to brush his teeth
because he was busy making sure that
his hair wasn't sticking up?
We arrived at the stop on time,
a big, empty parking lot,
and we had a bit of conversation,
and he was nervous, unlike last night.
We watched the minutes tick by.
6:40.
6:41.
6:42.
"There it is."
"Is that it for sure?"
"Yep."
"Uh oh. He's stopping over there. Run!"
A quick goodbye shout,
a mental hug and kiss,
and his foot lands on that first
black treaded step.
He's on the bus now.