Opening Emails....

    Rosebro1 spent most of the fall applying for colleges and college scholarships. It is an amazing journey  watching him move from a kid to a young man. On Friday afternoon, he received an email. It was from the school he really, really wants to attend. These days, you don’t get snail mail like we all did, but rather you get an email to “check the status of your application.” I sat beside him waiting for him to open his portal. I tried not to admit how nervous I was for him.  He looked at me and said, “Mom, (then the longest pause ever) I got in.” With the biggest smile I have seen on his face since last year when our world fell apart, I hugged him with such pride. He left me soon after to find out what other of his friends found out about their applications. I was alone and that is when the emotions took over. As a Mom, you never forget your babies. The new country song, “I’ll always remember you young” is so true. He is my baby. And he soon will leave me. But this is what I want. This is what we have worked for since his birth. This is why I read to him since I could see a baby bump. This is why we studied spelling words, listened to rap music of the multiplication tables, worked on countless projects, and fussed about effort. I have prayed about this journey more than probably anything else.

    Then I started thinking about when he started kindergarten. He had been in preschool (and his mom was a teacher) so he knew all his letters and sounds and was a beginning reader. And I loved watching that process. Learning how words work, being able to break unknown words apart, reading “real” books for the first time was amazing to watch. I remember when Rosebro2 was in 1^st grade, we had to change the cover of his Junie B Jones books to Magic Tree House covers because he didn’t want his friends to know that he loved Junie B. Jones books. I was humiliated when I preached and preached against AR points and Rosebro1 was the 1^st grade AR point winner for the year.

     This is why we do what we do. It is going to hurt when Rosebro1 leaves in August. I know him very well and he is not a home body. Yes, he will come home occasionally weekends and holidays and maybe summer, but he will not live with me full time ever again. It is a different kind of grief. It is a happy grief if that is such a thing. But it is what I worked for. It is why I’ve done what I’ve done for 18 years with him. It hasn’t been easy. It hasn’t always been fun. But it sure has been worth it.

     Isn’t this what it is like to be a teacher?  It is hard. It is not always fun. It is a lot of work, but it is worth every bit of it WHEN it is done right. Rosebro1 has a friend who has not made good choices always. His mother has made less good choices than him. It has made her job as a parent even harder. She tries, but she just never seems to carry out all of her promises. She called me Sunday. Her son not only didn’t get in to college, he had never applied in the first place. I thought about her and I thought about our work here. We can do it half way and get nothing but heartache or we can go all in and see the benefits of our hard work. One is so much more fun and one is educational malpractice. You make the choice.