This morning after the in class demonstrations and shadow boxes and power point presentations, we ended up at Tazza for coffee. The other mother, one of the ones who was so worried, said hello. We talked about real estate. We talked about schools.
We talked about the process made us into emotional wrecks. Maybe it was Christmas and maybe it wasn’t On the day we turned in the applications, I teared up for no reason when I was Rockefeller Center.
Then, later that day…
When My Kid, and the rest of her Girl Scout Troop, were singing Christmas Carols for the residents of an assisted living home…
The man, who must have been eighty years old, talked so fondly about his favorite elementary school teacher and what he learned and then he sang for us…
The children sang: I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas and the tears filled my eyes.
Hanging by a thread,
We mothers…
Inhaling for the first time,
on the day the middle school applications had to be turned in.
Fear and relief and resignation.
We laughed hysterically with tears running down our cheeks, outside, standing on the sidewalk, for a minimal joke. We needed to laugh.
There are still many months of the process to go before we know where our children will go to school next fall.