Oh, June. Juuuuuune.
You are so full of promise, with your (mostly) warm temps, extended daylight hours and quickly approaching end of the school year.
But we have a few issues to sort out first, if we’re going to hang out together in the future.
Ceremonies: Whether it’s an actual graduation or a dance recital or just a gymnastics trophy ceremony, I’m running around town with the hope of a spare tissue in my bag. As much as I have wished and waited for these scheduled activities to wind down, the finality of each one shows just how big my kids have grown over the course of the year. I somehow made it through Kindergarten graduation’s “Pomp & Circumstance” without making a total slobbering spectacle of myself but only in the just-barely category. But do me a favor and just look away when we attend my son’s Author Day presentation later this week and the teacher fires up the year-end slideshow. Especially if she sets it to the inevitably sentimental piece of music. I’m a goner. Look. Away. Because that’s not me bawling at 8:30am under the fluorescent lights of a second grade classroom.
The Emptying of the Desks: Hey, I get it – the teachers can’t keep all of the kids’ stuff stored in their classrooms and they want to give us a chance to see as much of their work as possible. But they really should warn us to clear out some space first. Because my kids have been bringing home enough paper items to fashion a school year wallpaper mosaic for our playroom/hallway/first floor/tri-state area. On a standard, non-June day, I barely keep my head above water in the Mom vs School Papers battleground. Now, forget it. I hereby raise my white flag in total defeat as I attempt many a clandestine, under-the-cover-of-darkness move to dispose of these treasures while my kids aren’t looking. I would just like to take a moment to be thankful for paying a flat rate for recycling every month. #blessed
Change: Yes, plain old change. June is fulllll of it. As in, my kids were smaller when we started the school year nine months ago and now they’re noticeably bigger and they hate the very themed backpacks they begged for last August and OMG what is happening with time and space. I’m not good with change. When things wrap up, it means the status quo is about to shift and my head is about to explode.
Fall Registration: Let me clarify that last point above. The status quo would shift if I didn’t meet every early bird registration email with utter disdain and denial. And June is throwing a lot of that bullshit my way. Summer camps, fine – their time is now. But can we not, for just few weeks, start pushing the fall schedules and sign ups with the subtitled pressure of are-there-or-aren’t-there-enough-spots-if-I-wait? I haven’t even signed the thank you cards for this year’s teachers yet. I’m still on the lookout for an impossibly flattering bathing suit. I refuse to do anything fall-ish when my summer hasn’t even begun. Got it, June?
What a roller coaster. We’re ending, we’re beginning, we’re still in school and we’re begging for summer vacation. The schedules morph in the span of a few weeks from frenetic with homework and activities and schedules to wide open spaces on the calendar. It’s a shifty time. And if you love transitions and change, then allow me to recommend June as your month. Surely you’ll savor every one of its 2,000+ transitional moments.
Me, not so much. I’ll be much more at home when I’m sitting squarely in July, firmly in the summer and in the grasp of nothing in particular.
June, we’ll ride this out – but you’re killing me a little.
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