Middle School Maze

There is something about taking a walk in crunchy leaves that is nostalgic. Each crackling step conjures up a thought or memory like a flash of sunlight through golden branches.

In a blink, there you are as a child romping in the leaves raking with your grandpa and giggling cause he uses swear words your parents won’t use; a second later you’re playing hide and seek with your own tow-headed toddlers delighting in the piles for diving and rolling about; and just as fast you’re on a romantic Door County walk, fingers entwined, in a life less complicated long ago.

I have time most days to treasure these walks in the last warm days before the cold chases me in too fast to enjoy a daydream. I always share my trips about the neighborhood with my furry pal, Bucky, the family golden retriever.  Today I noticed he has licked a sore spot on his back leg. Craig says it’s because the last few days I’ve been called away to other appointments and have missed our daily walks and, in fact, quite a bit of the day altogether. “He misses you,” Craig says.  “He follows you around all day every day, and when you’re gone he doesn’t know what to do.”

While it’s flattering to be needed, it also brings a sense of responsibility to do something to help, even when you know you can’t.  And Bucky will have to take a number.  I’m already plenty busy with that very same feeling with my oldest and his first weeks in the turbulent waters of middle school.

I would love to know if anyone anywhere would go back to those days, knowing what we all know about it now.  And yet I have all this wisdom, but I am on the outside looking in, watching it all unfold, and wishing I could do something to make all the transitions easier, all the kids friendlier, all the homework simpler, and all the confusing changes just happen, without the risk of failing and without any pain at all.  But I know my boy who I want to protect with every fiber of my being, instead, has to navigate this house of mirrors on his own, like it or not.  And so I spend hours at night thinking of ways to help prepare him, to arm him for disaster, and to give him some sort of defense when I feel so completely defenseless.

And oddly enough, while I am riding this enormous wave of turmoil, I am certain, he has no idea I am a bit worried.  He shares with me, wide-eyed, stories of how different things are, of new teachers and so many new kids.  And even though he’s been slow to accept change ever since he was a baby, and taking risks doesn’t come naturally to him, he’s stretching just a bit, to try all the new things so many others have embraced from the first day of school. 

I am filled with pride and fear all at the same time.  I would like to do it all for him or at least with him.  I would like to be right there all day long, every day, with him following me around the house and taking walks in the leaves.  But instead, he is there, sweet and vulnerable, living through it, learning, sponge-like, the ins and outs of life in middle school.  And I’m here crunching leaves, trusting fate to smile on him kindly and day dreaming big for my precious cargo to sail through it all smoothly.