Tag Archives: back to school

Summer, don’t leave me…

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This week on the podcast, I have coffee with my little sister, Alex, who is a former guidance counselor and teacher, to get some perspective on back to school. Alex gives some tips on the best questions to ask about your child’s day to actually get a response and I try to get to the bottom of why having a kid going into first grade is carrying more weight than the first day of Kindergarten. We talk season changes on the ranch, back to school traditions and more. Listen at this link or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.  

What can happen in a summer at the ranch? When you’re raising two young daughters this is where they sprout and bloom, in this season of sunshine and sprinklers and butterflies and toads. We’re winding it down now.

If you’re reading this in your local newspaper, I am probably in one of the big towns coaxing those daughters to try on pair of school shoes, making them stand up, walk around a bit, feeling where their big toe hits, asking them if they feel ok. Do they feel ok? It’s the exact same thing my mom used to do, word for word it seems. Because these days you can get just about anything to come to you in the mail out here with the click of a button, but the shoes need to be tried. It’s a back-to-school ritual that we’re in now because I blinked.

I blinked.

They all told me not to, but I did and the spring that brought record breaking snow drifts with it, then it melted and made way for a summer filled with armpit high grass and wildflowers and healthy black calves kicking up their heels on the hilltops and laying down in the cool draws. Because the rain came to feed the hay crop and you should see the bales dotting the fields. Here we spend our three fleeting months of summer preparing for the long winter and we’re all more prepared than ever it seems. Thanks to the rain. Thanks to the sun. Thanks for the work.

I watched my daughters’ sandy hair turn blonde under that sun, and their pale skin tan, their cheeks rosy and flushed when they came in for popsicles. And I saw them stretch out of their long pants so they could properly skin their knees on the scoria road as they ran wide open toward their cousins’ house. I want to run wide open with them right back into the spring so we can do it all over again, but this time I’ll keep my eyes wide open. I promise.  

Why does this always happen to me? Why do I get lonesome for this season before it’s even officially over? Is it because it always feels like we’re at the end of one of those predictable summer themed movies, where the lighting is perfect and they conquer a fear and they all fall in love in the end at a beach house somewhere along the coastline? Back here in the real world I’m picking the ripe tomatoes from my garden and hoping for rain again, the sun is setting low at 9 pm and  the credits are rolling and I have to get back inside to get to the dishes….

And nothing has changed here except sort of everything. Kids learn to ride their bikes and climb the monkey bars backwards. They make friends in the campground they’ll never see again. She decides not to wear shirts with unicorns on them because she’s not a baby anymore. They fix their own hair, get their own milk to pour, decide they like tomatoes, grow an inch…

It’s all so gradual, these quiet transformations, like summer herself. You go out one day and notice the sweet peas coming with the green grass and the next time you look they’re dried up and gone, making way for the sunflowers to bend in the wind alongside that green grass turned golden.

This is us too you know, I need to make the reminder should we forget that we are as much a part of the transformation of seasons and time ticking as the rising and setting of the sun. You might not have noticed. You might have blinked, and that’s ok.

So stand up, walk around in it now, how does it fit? Does it feel ok? Do you feel ok?

Summer Don’t Leave Me

Summer don’t leave me
stay under my feet
hang warm in the sky
don’t dry up the wheat

Summer stay near me
to kiss my skin tan
mess up my long hair
hold tight my hand

Summer please stay here
in the chokecherry trees
on the back of a good horse
in the green of the leaves

Oh, Summer my good friend
there’s only so many hours
so take the storms and the rainbows…

but don’t take my wildflowers

Wild Sunflowers

A letter to you as you let go of my hand

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Dear Daughters,

Last week I ran into another mom in the grocery store while I was pushing you, Rosie, in the car cart through the cereal section. I had just picked you up from preschool and you were helping me pick out snacks for your big sister’s backpack.

Rosie and her cousin Ada on their first day of Preschool

Turns out we needed to pack snacks for kindergarten, a line in the welcome packet I must have skimmed past 60 times and still didn’t register until you, Edie, informed me three days in. You were snarfing down a granola bar and I was horrified thinking how hungry you must have been watching the other kids take their apples and fruit snacks out after recess for three days straight. A lump formed in the back of my throat and I wanted to cry. I thought I had it under control. Turns out I didn’t really.

But you, dear Edie. You totally did.

I was retelling this story to the mom in the grocery store, adding that I had spent the entire day in and out of those tears because when I watched you, Edie, walk so confidently into those big doors, a music montage of your entire childhood and your future rolled through my head. Then suddenly you were grown and I was helping you pack your car to leave me. Like really leave. And it shook me up a little bit.

Also, did I mention you kicked me out of the room the first day of school? I held your hand and helped you find your desk. You sat down, folded your hands in your lap and I took your picture. You asked me how many more pictures I needed and then you asked me when it was time for the parents to leave.

“Do you want me to leave?” I was surprised. You’re usually so shy. But you whispered “Yes,” confidently in my ear, and so off I went then. Into my own new realm of parenthood, the realm where neither of you are babies anymore.

That mom in the store could relate. She told me she cried in her car and then wrote her son a letter to open when he graduates from high school. She said it was five pages. Or maybe it was more. And she said I should do the same. To write you a letter. And the thing is, I’m a writer. I write about you two all the time. But to write to you? She was right. I should.

When I was getting ready to head to surgery to get my tumor removed a little over a year ago, I was terrified of leaving you two without a mother (you may not remember, but you girls regularly trace the line of my scar with your little fingers, ask if it still hurts and then when I say no, we reassure one another that I’m OK now).

And so I thought I should do just that, to write you each a letter, just in case I had to leave you before I was ready. I thought maybe I could look ahead and try to imagine a world in which I wasn’t there for you for things like this: your first day of preschool Rosie, and kindergarten Edie. For your big wins and heartbreaks, for all the fights over hair and outfits and nights that got too late and the trouble you’ll get into as you search for yourself.

But I couldn’t bear the thought of it. I couldn’t find the words just as I can’t seem to find them here today. Except that I never want to forget, Rosie, that some mornings you cry because your oatmeal spoon has oatmeal on it. And Edie, we told you twice last week not to get too close to the stock dam, and twice you got stuck so deep in the mud we had to get a shovel to dig your shoes out.

So I told you that, and now I guess I’ll tell you this: The world is going to be that oatmeal spoon and that black, sticky mud sometimes. It’s either going to seem fine to everyone else, but not to you, or seem fine to you, but not to everyone else. While it’s our job as parents right now to keep you fed and safe and out of the deep end, it’s my hope that we can raise you to be so completely and incredibly yourselves that you’re not scared of being scared or uncomfortable or a little bit lost. You’ll know how to ask for a hand, and how to generously give of yours.

In this milestone, dear daughters, the one where you are letting go of my hand, I can’t tell you how honored and grateful I am to be here, watching you, ready for when you need it again.

And also, dear daughters. You have kindness in you. Let it shine out your ears.

You are brave. Let that bravery lift up others.

You are ours and you are wonderfully you and we are so proud of you.

Love,

Mom

P.S. I bought you some Twinkies

Back to school can make us wonder if we’ve done enough

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If you’ve missed it along the way, for the past couple years I’ve had the privilege (and fun) of developing and acting as the editor of Prairie Parent, a parenting magazine in Western North Dakota.

This month’s issue tackled the fun, worry, stress and excitement of back to school. And while I don’t have kids in school yet, I know with time flying the way it does it’s just around the corner.

and so is driving…

After a conversation with my friend up the road who is raising four kids, with only one left at home now that school has started, I started reflecting on that time and what we do with it.

And why, as parents, do we feel like we’re never doing enough.

Back to school can make us wonder if we’ve done enough
Prairie Parent

Have a read on the site and then browse the rest of our contributors take on the season at www.prairieparent.com. I’m pretty proud of the thoughtful and heartfelt material these parents put out into the world each month.

Because at the end of the day, as parents, sometimes we just need each other to get through it. (I say this as I’m in a one hour, going on three week and counting bedtime battle with my two-year-old…Lord help me)