Next

Adam has finished his last day of first grade.  More accurately, his last hour of first grade.  He'll come home in a few minutes and the summer before second grade will begin.

With our last Adamless hour, Gretchen and I biked (I biked and she rode the trailer, which was more fun for me than for her, as she made clear) over to the grade school to drop off a flower for Adam's teacher and to pick up his epipen.  Then, because there was still a little time left, I rode around a nearby prairie preserve.  Gretchen complained the whole time, but in spite of that and the 90 degree heat, I felt wonderful.  I love riding the bike when I do not have to worry about getting hit by a car. 

I don't know how biking is going to go this summer.  Last summer we biked to swimming lessons most mornings.  But last year I could get in the pool with Gretchen, and this summer I will be stuck sweating on the the sidelines.  How sad!  I also don't know if the kids are just too big to both fit in the trailer this year.  They have both grown significantly since last summer.  It just might not work.  And neither one is proficient enough on bikes to ride their own.  And so good-bye to a lovely little season in my life that was biking with my children behind me.  I'm glad I did it.  I will miss it.  I could be very very sad about that.

But G and I can bike again in the fall.  We'll walk to preschool twice a week most weeks, and I will love that.  It will be a new season of contentment.  And eventually my children will ride their own bikes.  Eventually they may go with me on long long rides.  Who knows what life will bring.

I think that is the secret to not breaking down into weepy tears on the last day of first grade: having lived long enough to learn that life is never ever going to stay put.  A perfect state of balance, once achieved, will shortly be upset.  Someone will grow or change or get involved in a new activity.  Someone will be born; someone will die.  Kids will outgrow some pleasures and grow into others.  Careers will end or change directions.  If one must mourn, one must also place trust in the future, that beauty and joy can be found again somewhere new.

This summer we will visit aunts and cousins and maybe the zoo.  We will go camping.  We will go to the library and the pool.  Maybe Adam will ride his bike without training wheels.  I will get up early and ride or run as the sun is rising.  The sun will stay up late and the neighbors will meet us in the back yard.  We'll whip up some mudslides and eat beans we grew in our new garden--maybe not together.  And if we look back, we will also look forward to the unknown blessings that await us.  Next.