Sometimes life needs a narrator. As this week winds down, I can hear Garrison Keillor intoning “It was a long week in Lake Wobegon.”
I’m not going into details, but suffice it to say I’ve been whiney and weepy and self-absorbed.
But for a few hours tonight I was transported when I expected to be traumatized.
Dedicated church youth group leader, Perry Wayne Hanson, another mom and I took 25+ sixth graders to Target to shop for Secret Santa gifts for each other. Nothing got broken, and they bought thoughtful gifts for each other.
As the mom of a 14-year-old and an almost 19-year-old, I’m a veteran field trip chaperone. I’ve been everywhere from a pumpkin patch with kindergartners to New York City with a busload of seventh graders. My finest hour was not a class trip to a Pittsburgh museum when my older son was in fifth grade. I watched helplessly as one of my charges leaned on a glass shelf full of snow globes in the museum gift shop. It snowed all right...
I’m transitioning….too old to have more babies, too young (given the age of my babies) to have grandchildren. Age is creeping up on us, and in some cases galloping. My husband’s 82-year-old mother had her appendix out this week, which was fortunate because a slow-growing spot of cancer was spotted and removed.
That and other concerns made for a long week on the prairie. But it hit a balmy 30 degrees today, and no snow globes crashed to the floor.
Sometimes that’s enough. And sometimes you get caring middle schoolers who remind you of the real reason for the season.