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Smiley Friday

Happy Friday, friends!!! Happy Favorite Things Friday!! Today my daughter officially heads back to her university for fall semester of her sophomore year. She and her father managed to fit all of her things into her car. (I stayed hidden under the covers. I wasn’t sure what types of emotions might be erupting from this situation, and I decided that my excitable energy would not be good for the mix. I kept our crazy spaniel, Trip, with me, too, for this same reason.) Speaking of emotions, ours are a big ol’ mixed bag here. Back to school (even when it comes to college) has a tendency to bring up nostalgia, excitement, wonder, fears, hopes, relief, and exhaustion with adjusting to a new schedule. I know the “mixed bag” well. Our family has done the “back to school” experience for over two decades. As I send prayers and blessings to my own daughter, I do the same for your own back-to-schoolers. Praying for safety, wisdom, knowledge, fun, confidence and inner growth this school year, for all of our babies and our grandbabies (and for their teachers, and for all of us who love these precious kids more than life itself)!!!!

Today my favorites are going to highlight two of my most loyal, wonderful readers whom I have never met in person. (It turns out that they both live all of the way across the country from me, in beautiful California.) I feel so grateful that they both found their way to my blog somehow (I like to believe that it was a mystical sort of fate). Both of these women are excellent writers, and they have supported my blog for years with their daily presence, their frequent comments, and their financial generosity. Kelly and Gail, I love you for what you have shared on the blog, in so, so many ways. I am grateful for you both. I am humbled by you both. I am inspired by you both. I appreciate you both. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (Please know that I feel this way about all of my dear readers, but these two women deserve this special recognition from me, in a way that I can give back to them. This I know.) Please go to these links for Kelly’s and Gail’s websites to enjoy their own amazing gifts for the written word:

Home

https://gaillfontana.com/

I know that some of my other wonderful readers are also great writers and poets. Please add your own links to your websites in my Comments Section. I am so greatly honored that other writers like to read my work. It means the world.

****Also speaking of support, I added a new tip jar to my Home page (see the Leave Tip black button on the Home page). It is safely and securely run by Stripe, and it accepts Google pay. I have decided not to add distracting advertisements to my website, and nor do I make “fake reviews” for financial support from companies, so I rely on keeping this website alive from the generosity of my dear husband’s support and from other donations. (you have to pay for a web host, and for WordPress in order to maintain many blog websites) I write daily, and I offer my blog up to anyone in the world who wants to read it. (I don’t do Patreon or Medium or Substack, which require paid subscriptions.) Therefore, if you feel an urge to help with the costs of keeping Adulting – Second Half going, I am ever so grateful!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Just Me and Him

Today’s the real deal. My daughter having started college with summer classes was just a trial run. I convinced myself that she was just away at summer camp. Plus, my son was home all summer with us, doing a summer internship. Today, my youngest son and my daughter are headed up to their university for the fall semester. Today is the first time in twenty-six years, that our household is truly whittled down to just me and him (and three crazy dogs).

My sister-in-law has been going through and digitizing old family pictures and yesterday, she sent a new set of them. One of the pictures was of two cute, young twenty-somethings, at the back of a limo, headed to their honeymoon. Just me and him.

Little did we know, that from that limo ride, a lifetime of spectacular adventures awaited us, raising a large family with an expanding vision, with a prideful energy and sometimes living on just a wing and a prayer. Just me and him (and our big brood).

It’s kind of like we are back in the back of that limo today. Only this time, it’s our kids ahead of us on the road, waving happily back at us, as they move on forward in their own directions towards the lives of their own dreams. I imagine that we are sitting back there in our cushioned seats of the limo, imagining this next coming stage in our shared lives, with an expanding vision, a prideful energy, fully knowing and better understanding that some of it will have to be lived on a wing and a prayer. We are full of trepidation, yet also excitement and anticipation. Just like the last ride in the back of the limo almost 28 years ago, we are ready as we can be. Just me and him.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

School Days

“Career OVER. I’ve made my mark. I’m done. We were lining up for lunch. A student gives me a hug. I immediately start joking. Are you looking for an A?! Do you want a candy bar?! She looks up at me and says: You’re the reason I come to school.” (credit: @joypcoffee, Twitter)

Teachers, you are amazing. I am friends with many excellent teachers. And I can still call out the teachers by name who made a big difference in my own life and of course, I can also call out by name the teachers who made a huge difference in the lives of our four children. Teachers, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The kids in our area started school this week. It feels surreal. This will be the first time in over two decades that I won’t belong to a PTA, or have to go on a scavenger hunt to find an odd colored folder with a specific amount of pockets that doesn’t exist.

Our youngest child, our daughter, started college this summer. She is home for a couple of weeks before she heads back to her university for the fall session. She was horrified when were in a store the other day and the clerk asked her if she was doing back-to-school shopping. “I’m in college,” she declared, loud and proud, for everyone around to hear. At what age does the shift occur when we no longer want to be noticed for being older and more mature? I can’t even remember. That ship sailed a long, long time ago for me. I did feel slightly delighted (and a little embarrassed) when I was purchasing BOGO iced animal crackers and the clerk asked me if these were for school snacks. “My kids are all grown,” I admitted. “These are mature woman sneaky snacks for when sugar cravings hit.” She nodded in full understanding.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

It’s Baaaack!

My daughter started back to school today. She’s a sophomore in high school. We did some back to school shopping earlier in the week. She picked out a pair of “mom jeans” (that’s literally what the tag says) that she wore today. “They’re back in style. They are kind of eighties style,” is what she told me. And what made her think that she needed to describe “eighties style” to me?!? I just hope that they leave the neon, and the shellacked, big hair, back in the history books.

Summertime Blues

I have a little of that “end of summer” melancholy going on right now. My high schoolers are headed back to school on Monday and my college student son heads back to the university in about a week and a half. His girlfriend came over to the house to say good-bye to us last night as she is heading back to college early for her sorority rush season. We released our eldest son into his own adult world earlier this summer. I wonder when we are complete “empty nesters” if the seasons will seem as acutely distinct as they do right now.

It’s not that I’m entirely sad that summer is over. The heat has slowed everything to a molten glob of inertia. I’m eager for a faster pace. The summer jobs that the kids have had at the beach and eateries have lost their novelty and newness and the “wind down” is obvious. I remember how shockingly disrupted I felt the first summer after all four of my kids had started going to school for full days. I’m a person who likes my “alone time” and I am eager to feel the uninterrupted quiet of my thoughts and my own personal rhythms again.

Still, it’s the little things that make each summer special and a little unique to previous summers. This year when I drove my daughter to tennis every morning, we enjoyed a routine of listening to the same crazy radio show and laughing along with the antics of the DJs who we have both grown to really like. We saw on a country road, the same elderly man, dressed formally, always smiling, walking with his cane and this mop of a dog that my daughter and I have nicknamed “Smoothie.” “Smoothie” gives us the most hilarious “stare down” every morning, annoyed that we have disturbed the peace of she and her beloved. The few times that we haven’t seen them on their daily walk, we have been concerned. We missed them. I will miss them this fall.

Summer is the time of big, new adventures and the anticipation of big, new adventures. It is the time of slowing down and baking, prepping for the feast of the banquet of new learning and growing in the fall. It is a pause in the schedules of life. I have to hit “play” again here soon and I think I’m ready, but I’ll keep the bright memories stored on my life drive forever.