End of the Year Thoughts

The end of the school year is a bit like the curves on Highway 17 in a blinding rain....you know they are there...and you are expecting them....but you come upon them so quickly that they surprise you.  I know it's not an analogy that many will understand; but, if you've driven highway 17, you'll get it.  The end of the school year is like that for me.  I know it's coming...I'm prepared for it...and then suddenly it's upon me in a flash of graduation parties, Baccalaureate, teacher farewells, final exams, semester grades, and Prom.  It happens so quickly, there's barely a moment to slow down.

I want to savor the friendships of those teachers who are moving on...some to new jobs and some to new chapters in their lives.  I want to say so long, but not goodbye, to those students that I've grown to love and cherish over the four short years that I've known most of them.  I want to stop and reflect on those things that went well and those things that could use improvement; but, in the flurry of the business that is the end of the year, I don't have the time.

Teaching is a unique profession.  I can't think of too many careers  that allow you the luxury of  starting over each August, each year with it's challenges and promises, difficulties and joys.  And, it's a uniquely sad profession, too.  So many of the things that we do, we do in the blind faith that they will, one day, make a difference.  The difficult student will grow up; the struggling student may, eventually, find a course, a job, a passion that will excite him (or her); the immature student will one day get married and have kids of their own, and perhaps, if we are lucky, remember the lessons that we drilled into his head each day about family and faith and God and each other...And, so, once again, it is May...the time of year that teachers (and students) anticipate with joy and enthusiasm; and also that time of year that makes us, at least some of us, reflective and for a moment, regretful of all those opportunities that we missed and student's whose lives we touched and didn't.

Onward to next year....in cheers and celebration of all that we did accomplish during this chaotic, crazy year.

Mothering

Ah, as Father Stewart reminded us today, next week is Mother's Day. And, I still miss my mom...her wisdom, her smile, her energy and enthusiasm for Cardinal baseball, fishing, and her family. I think a lot about mothering and mothers, young and old. Yesterday I had the privilege of attending a baby shower, given by the "aunties" of a dear young friend who is expecting her first baby. Surrounded by family, she's embarking on a journey fraught with perils and opportunities for joy. As I told her in my piece of parenting advice, "babies are God's way of reassuring us that life is good and that He does, in fact, exist." Who cannot hold a baby and not marvel at God at work in the world. And, as anxiety ridden and stress filled as new motherhood can be, I think it is easier in some ways than parenting the 20 somethings. They are young people embarking on their own, learning and growing, stumbling and failing, loving and trying. It's so hard to watch when they make dumb decisions, despite your best advice and constant worry. Every ambulance siren that ever sounds, every tear, every heartbreak, that they experience, touches the mother, too. All we can do is be there to help pick up the pieces, to remind them that life is messy and that the journey is worth the effort, that finding love and happiness is possible, although never really easy. Mothers matter. Take heart all of you who mother, whether you mother a baby, an older child, a student, a niece, a friend, or a stranger. Mothers, too, are God's way of being present in our world.

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