Tonight is Open House night at my daughter’s high school. This will probably be about the 20th Open House that I have attended, in the capacity as a parent. I’m not even really sure the actual number, as they all start running into each other, in my mind. Usually my husband and I have had to “tag team” these events, going to different of our children’s classes and coming back together to compare notes. (I have to admit that he has always been more earnest in his note taking than I have been.) Sometimes we haven’t even been at the same school. It will be strange to be able to go to the same classrooms together and greet the teachers, as a team.
My daughter is a sophomore, so her classes are still likely to be pretty full with parents during this Open House. Senior classes tend to be pretty sparse. One year, my eldest son’s senior English class only had one parent attending. It was me. This poor young, earnest, first year teacher had prepared probably the best PowerPoint presentation I had ever seen produced at an Open House event. I half expected fireworks to be let off at the end of it. When he asked if there were any questions at the end of it, I wanted to ask, “Should we cry now?” It was definitely an awkward situation.
I had my eldest child when I was 25. It has been good for my ego over the years to be “the young mom” when I visited with his teachers and friends and coaches. My son is a big man with a full beard who looks older than his age, so one time, when I was donning a baseball cap and big sunglasses, someone once even confused us as husband and wife. It was definitely another awkward moment for me. I think it was a traumatic, nauseating, possibly “in need of therapy”, moment for him.
But now, as I enter the last three years of Open Houses to go, I’m definitely not one of the young moms. I’ve been around the block a few times. I have the worry lines on my forehead to prove it. But with the lines, also comes the sage wisdom that everything is going to be okay. My daughter will find her path, just as her brothers before her have, and her father and I have, before our precious children even came into being. Her earnest, kind, dedicated teachers will do their best to impart their knowledge to broaden her mind’s understanding of this world and to keep her thirsting for more learning. Her tennis coaches will coax the best of her physical prowess out of her, which will give her the best prize of all – confidence in her strength and her abilities to overcome challenges. Her art teachers will encourage her to expand her amazing creativity and her unique expressions of the world’s wonder. Her friends will be her mutual cheerleaders, supporters, experience-sharers, and perhaps, among the best teachers that she will have in many regards, as she morphs into her womanhood. The administrators at her high school will keep her life structured, ordered and hopefully safe, for the next three years. So knowing all of this, I greet tonight’s Open House with open arms and an open heart of gratitude for this warm, connected community that is helping me to launch my final little ship, of the fleet of ships, that makes up our family.