It’s tough. We have transitioned to middle school. Gone are the days of only having a roundabout to contend with (you don’t stop at a roundabout, you know that, right?), predictable after school care (I have to come up with something every Wednesday and Friday when J doesn’t have dance), tears about missed friends and harder classes, being under a microscope, viola and Spanish class blues . . . and the dreaded, and horrific traffic.
I face traffic now (coming + going) four times a day. Before I had none. We just sailed to school … J in the crow’s nest, “traffic up yonder,” but yay, we’d get off at the Willow off ramp, no problama . . .
One of those four times in traffic is “traffic” in a parking lot (can you believe it?) that all of us—attempting to escape the gridlock on the street—do, a quickie right turn into the gas station in the strip mall only to find the rest of us already there. Dang!
Traffic. Four times a day. Yep. Takes getting used to. What are all of these people doing out here at 3:30 in the afternoon? For real? Mostly, we take the back streets, which is its own “Whaaaaaa are all these people doing on the back streets?”
Trials. Okay, classes are smaller, things are more touchy-feel-y when before you could just run out on the playground with your friends and hang upside-down on the jungle gym with Doritos in your mouth.
First days at new school, ummm . . . hard. Tears. I play the flute not the viola . . . I can’t read the music. What is this alto clef nonsense? I have to learn the notes all over again?
Tears. I miss my friends. I hate school. I don’t want to go here. Big tears . . . rolling down my baby’s face. I hurt. She hurts. We hurt. But it will get better. I promise, I tell her.
And I know it will. Change is hard.
—SBM (SOS)
Single Busy Mommy 