Tempus fugit, carpe diem and all that. Last day of kindergarten, pass the kleenex.  This post was originally published last year but seems especially appropriate today as I sit at my desk trying to figure out how it all got away from me so fast.  Neither sweet nor bitter stays on the tongue for very long.  Tempus fugit indeed.

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These days, life seems to click past from weekend to weekend, holiday to holiday, school year to school year.  It is as though I am seeing my life through a View-Master.  With the click of the thumb, one season disappears from view and is replaced with another.  And then another, and another.

Soon the school year will be over and we’ll look forward to lazy summer days, swimming and popsicles.  Click.  Then Father’s Day.  Click. Then Independence Day. Click. And then Labor Day.  Click. And then back to school again.

I was almost 39 when we married and AD was 42.  We were both on the dark side of 40 when Sean came along.  And perhaps because we are older or because we came to parenthood in the 11^th hour, time is the filter which sifts the meaning out of the mundane for us.  Time is our most precious and finite resource and informs our every thought.

The other day I watched a young woman in the grocery store pushing a cart with her baby in the seat.  I watched her stop the cart and lean in to rub noses with her baby and coo sweet round syllables to her.  I estimated her to be about 25 and I thought about how if she lives to be 80, she will get 55 years with her baby.  And I was a little envious.

If I’m lucky enough to live to be 80, I will get 36 years with my child.  I am so grateful that I ever got to be a mom. I am grateful for every single day, even the days when I cry and complain about how hard it is because I know that no matter how many years I get, in the closing moments of life as I am ushered off  into the shadow of death, if I wish for anything at all, it will be more time.

This right-now season that fills the frame of the View-Master, is especially vibrant and crisp and golden.  My eyes want to linger here, to stay just a little bit longer…

Click.

I wasn’t one of those moms who cried the day she sent her kid off to kindergarten. I was excited about the adventure that I knew was ahead for Sean.  I expected joy and it has been delivered in abundance.

But now that the school year is about to come to an end, I am beginning to feel a twinge of sadness, maybe the same sort of sadness that the other mothers felt in the fall.  I am not ready for this sweet season of half day school to come to an end.  For the past three years, we’ve enjoyed living in a small, safe bubble at this school and now that bubble is about to burst. And I’ve got my fingers in my ears waiting for the inevitable pop.

The leaving is so hard.  If only we could just stay a little longer, we surely would.

We’ve been visiting a lot of schools lately as we try to figure out where to send Sean for 1^st grade. So yesterday, after we got home from school I told Sean about the school we had visited that day and how we really liked the 1^st grade teacher.

“But I really like the teacher I have now,” he said.  He quietly dropped his chin to his chest and made that long face he makes when he is trying not to cry.  He tried to blink back the tears but they rolled down his cheeks anyway.

I didn’t have any wisdom to offer him, so I just reached across the table and touched his hand.

He wiped the tears from his face with is forearm.  “Wouldn’t it be nice if the teacher always went with you?” he whispered.

I nodded.  I pulled him across the table and into my lap.

And I thought to myself that a good teacher always goes with you, in some small way, wherever you go.

Last year was the year of The Brunette. This year, it is apparently the year of The Blonde. What can I say brunettes, the times they are a’changin’.

Last year, Sean was in love with his teacher Ms. Vicky, who is a drop-dead gorgeous Latina.  I must say, Sean’s taste in women is exquisite, much like that of his own father who didn’t find anyone exquisite enough to marry until he was 41.

Ms. Vicky’s daughter was also in Sean’s pre-K class and every day Sean would come home from school talking about the two lovely brunettes.  He would sometimes compose a letter to mail to one or the other; other times he would draw a picture for one of them and stuff it into his backpack to take to school.  The television commercials would have you believe that women want flowers or diamonds. No. They want pictures drawn in crayon which have been folded seven times and maybe have milk stains.

Be that as it may, kindergarten has brought in a whole new crop of babes and this year Sean has had his eye on two girls who by description, are about the same – Christie Brinkley in miniature — bright, beachy, athletic, long blonde hair.

The other day, as we drove home from school, he chattered about the two girls and how he was trying to decide which one he should like to marry.  I asked him what he liked about Kate and he cited her slim shape, her long “silvery” hair and that she was smart.  I told him that I thought it was good to know what you wanted in a mate and that those were some good qualities.

I also said that I thought I would grow my hair out long, just like Kate.  He said, no, he didn’t think that that was a good look for me, that I was “too thick” for that kind of hair.  Okay. Very well then.

When I asked him what he liked about Maddie, he named the same things – she has a slim shape, long silvery hair, that she is smart, and she is the fastest girl in the whole school.

A fast girl in kindergarten is fine, a fast girl in high school, not so much.

“And she includes everybody,” he added.

I had to sigh. Oh that every kid was taught to include everybody.  Wouldn’t our schools (and world) be a better place?

I was delighted that Sean recognized that including others is a wonderful quality in a person — something to appreciate and admire and something to which he should aspire.

Last week Sean’s kindergarten teacher asked me if I’d be willing to come up to the school and lead a couple of 15-20 minute classes on pumpkins. I know my way around a pumpkin and it sounded like fun, so I said sure, why not.

When I arrived at the school,  the teacher gave me a 10-second overview of the lesson plan, three pumpkins and a knife. Then she blindfolded me, spun me around three times and pushed me towards my classroom.

The lesson plan was this:  She would send three or four children at a time to my room where we would list on a whiteboard all the characteristics of a pumpkin. Then we would read a short book on how a pumpkin starts from a seed, grows into a pumpkin, and then the seeds from the pumpkin return to the ground where more pumpkins grow.  Oh I’m sorry.  I just gave away the ending.  Hope that doesn’t ruin it for you.

Anyway, after the book, the children were to explore the pumpkin.  They were to put their hands in, on and around the pumpkin, they were to experience pumpkin slime and become one with the pumpkin.  At which time I would send them back to the teacher covered in pumkin guts and she would send me three more unsuspecting children (insert scary maniacal laugh).

If I’ve learned one thing as a mother, it is this:  managing children is a lot like throwing a party.  Any possible thing that can be done ahead of time, should be done ahead of time.

With that thought in mind, I decided that I would cut the tops off the pumpkins before the children arrived to my room so that I wasn’t faced with wielding a knife while a small crowd of 5-year-olds tried to “help”.  But the pumpkins the teacher had given me were as hard as bowling balls. The knife that I had just wasn’t cutting it.  Cutting it!  Ha!  I crack myself up.

About time this, another teacher, Ms. Danielle, happened by my room and saw that I had worked up a bead of sweat trying to cut the top off a pumpkin.  She did not point and laugh but politely asked how it was going.  I said, not so well and I jokingly asked her if she happened to have a chainsaw.  She said, no, but she did have a hacksaw.  I laughed and then I noticed she wasn’t kidding, so  I said, “Dudette? Seriously?”

Ms. Danielle slipped away and quickly returned with a hacksaw.  I immediately had a series of thoughts: 1) Ain’t it great living in Texas!? 2) Mental note to self:  Do not tick off Ms. Danielle.  3) Wow, she’s got her own hacksaw!  4) If she keeps a hacksaw in her purse, I wonder what she has under the car seat?

Side Bar:  If I were lost out in the wilderness with someone, I would pick Ms. Danielle over Bear Grylls because for one thing, she carries a hacksaw and that would be useful. And two, she seems pretty pragmatic.  I’m sure she would not get naked and jump into a freezing cold river for demonstration purposes as Bear likes to do.  And three, being a woman, she would ask for directions and we wouldn’t get lost in the first place and we would go shopping instead and we would not have to eat bugs because we could just go to Starbucks or Panera.

There for a minute, I thought there was point to this post, but apparently I was mistaken.

All in all, I think the Intro to Pumpkinology class was a success.  No one threw up or fainted or suffered any permanent psychological damage other than three small pumpkins.

Sean’s kindergarten teacher called me on Sunday night to ask if I would be the art teacher this week at school.  I was thrilled when she asked because I have been chomping at the bit to use my hard earned, but mostly useless, degree in art.

When I think of all the time, money and effort I invested in my degree, I remind myself that education is never a waste.  I tell myself that for me, education was about enlightenment more so than employment. Which is good, because that’s pretty much how it has worked out.  In the ten years since my graduation I have on many occasions been enlightened but have yet to be employed.

As Mrs. D. worked her way toward asking if I would help out, I was mentally planning my lesson:  I would start out with color theory, maybe introduce  perspective drawing combined with a brief survey of Classical Greek and Roman art and then….

“I was thinking we could decorate small pumpkins,” she said, “Have the kids paint faces on them, maybe glue on some google eyes….”

“Yes!” I said, “That’s exactly what I was thinking!”

Okay, so we’ll skip the Greek ideals of beauty and go right for the google eyes.

I will teach those little children to glue on google eyes using the Greek ideals of beauty.  Education is never a waste.

This is what you can do with or without an art degreee