By: Jennifer Richardson Holt
It is absolutely gorgeous. I wasn’t expecting things to be this pleasant but here we are. I am currently sitting in my vehicle. It is roughly 80 degrees outside. The sun is shining and there are huge cotton candy clouds drifting by. The sky is an azure sea with cotton balls caught in the current. There is a surprisingly intoxicating breeze whipping those puffs along and that refreshment is weaving itself in and out of my open windows. I fully expected to be torn between the choice of saving gas by turning my engine off and putting down my windows but melting into a sweaty puddle or to burn painfully expensive gas idling however avoiding a death via swelter. Fortunately, though, I am not faced with heat stroke. The most taxing thing I am dealing with is the fact that this breeze is in fact so forceful that I keep having to wrangle my hair from attacking my face. This close to the end of the school year normally doesn’t leave much room for pleasant weather but here I am not only not dying but I am actually smiling at the loveliness of it all. Of course, I am also not at work as I usually would be, which is nice as well.
I may have spoken a bit too soon. While the weather is wholly cooperative, I could have done quite without the love bug pair that just moseyed across my windshield. I have bemoaned their ludeness before so I won’t subject you to that diatribe, but I assure you I could still speak on it just as frustratedly as I have in the past. I shall attempt to not let lascivious insects ruin my afternoon, however. I am sitting in the car rider pickup line at my daughter’s school where I have arrived ridiculously early but apparently that is just the way of things. My mother is usually the one that picks up my daughter. However, she and my father have gone on a trip and now I am tasked with the pickup line. My mother gets here early to be certain that she is one of the first few in line. No, it isn’t remotely necessary, however my daughter is a bit unique when it comes to being picked up. She is nothing if not dramatic, however she is convinced, and will fervently argue as much, that if she is not one of the first few names called to be picked up that she is going to be left at school. We have over and over assured her that if it isn’t Grandma, it will be Grandpa, or Mama or Daddy and if by some catastrophic occurrence it isn’t any of them, we even have other arrangements, and she will be picked up if we have to have someone sit outside the school until dawn the next day. But no. She’ll have none of it. She’s sure we may leave her. And no, there have been no circumstances in which she was forgotten somewhere, or some other such traumatic event that has occurred. There is absolutely no precedent whatsoever for her to feel this way but, as I have said, she is positive that there is only a hair’s breadth of fortune that is keeping her from the fate of having to live out her days abandoned at her school.
There is only the rest of this week and next week left of her academic calendar. And even then, the last 3 days of next week are only half days. If I had to guess by the time we are to that point a bare minimum of learning will be going on and they will be down to just celebration and watching the clock. I can’t particularly blame them though. It has been, for my family at least, a long, hard year. While my daughter is exceptionally smart (and I know, all parents say that, but I actually do have the standardized testing scores and other such documentation to prove it) even so this year has presented some struggles. She still can do everything. She isn’t really faced with anything she doesn’t understand or can’t sufficiently learn, but this year we have run headfirst into the brick wall that is lack of interest. And that collision is difficult for me to counter considering not only do I struggle with putting my best effort into things I don’t find interesting as well, but she and I even have disdain for the same thing, so I am just stuck wholeheartedly relating to her sentiments all the while needing to preach against them. It is a difficult and delicate spot to be in and if I’m honest, any time I approach the topic I feel rather hypocritical. But I suppose that part of the parent’s job is to try to help your children learn from your mistakes. And she and I both can learn from them, but it doesn’t make us loathe math any less.
Birdsong is mingling with the sound of the blowing leaves. A rust-colored dragonfly just came and casually hovered over my windshield. There was a brief concern I was being invaded as a bird dived from a nearby roof disconcertingly near my open window. In the far distance, I see a repetitive back and forth motion that must be kids on swings. Before long, those swings will be still for a few months and this line I sit in will not appear every weekday afternoon. While sometimes it can be rather warm, I do enjoy this bit of time just sitting, waiting and thinking. It is a nice change of pace. It gives me time to ponder how little time I have left with a second grader and how much I hope her grandma stays willing to help with her math homework.
Prose and Possibilities 