Motherhood 101

While waking my trying-to-be-college-bound senior this morning, a feeble voice pleaded,"Mom, I fell asleep writing my essay last night (the essay for an overdue college application), and I need for you to proof it. Can I please stay home and finish?"
"No!" I replied defiantly, "I have to be somewhere by 8:30 ,and your not going to school means I become the carpool driver which means I can't be where I need to be on time ! You cannot miss APChemistry which means you have to be at school by noon which means I'll have to be proofreader now which doubly makes me not be anywhere anytime this morning!" How dare my son mess with my busy schedule like this?
Flashback...18 years...I am able to hold this 5A -Conference- Championship -football -lineman -West Point -wannabe in my arms. It's a quiet morning in the perfectly- planned, meticulously -matching nursery, and I am changing the day's first diaper of my beautiful son, when, suddenly without warning ,comes projectile diarrhea all over his hand-sewn bumper pad... and beyond. How dare this baby mess with my pristine setting?
After months of waiting and organization, the very one for whom the room was prepared becomes the one who is extremely inconvenient!
Ring the bell: Motherhood 101 is in session.
I am now rounding the bend of this Mom-Race preparing to sprint the final 200 meters. Somehow, between carpooling and essay editing, I am able to pause for perspective.:
1.) Editing a college application essay is better than cleaning projectile diarrhea from the nursery.
2.) I haven't yet graduated from Mom class.
3.) He's still here.

Life is Crazy

Summer vacation is over, but it was 107 degrees today. Go figure. Soon, I'll be grabbing hot dogs at the football field and juggling homework and trying to keep the laundry clean for the next school day. Good news: I'll be entering a new phase of life not having to drive the carpool because Clayton can do it for me. It's wonderful and sad all at once. I won't miss the two hours daily spent in the car, but I will miss the conversations and the keeping in touch.
England was the highlight of my summer --especially taking Stuart and Clayton both. It was great to go to the beach and to be with friends, but most of the summer was just a blur.
Somehow I got involved in planning my 30 year high school reunion,which ate too much time but was fun and scary all wrapped up in one big package . I made a vow to run to Dillards for every skin care product available and also to become even more urgent in my life's mission because time is spinning by so fast, and it waits for no man.
Clayton will be a senior, and Stuart is right on his heels, and my cocker spaniel has cataracts, and I'm wondering if I will ever get to do everything that I wish I could. I want to take up cycling and go on one of those bike trips through France. I want to build a garden in front of my house that will make people stop just to smell my flowers and sometimes be caught taking pictures. I want to explore art and photography and take a watercolour class in the Cottswolds-- just because.
I don't know what it's like to own a cat, but sometimes I wonder if I would like to know firsthand. I wish my house was clean, but I don't want to get rid of my boys to find out what that's like. Mostly, I just hope that when I'm here this time next year that I will be able to look back knowing that I did "seize the day" because life is crazy, and that's really how I like it-- even though I dream of moving to a log cabin in the Ozarks where I could grow my own vegetables and raise chickens.