Faith has had her first day of 1st grade. Went well. It’s funny, our concerns for our kids are always social in nature. She’ll do great learning-wise, there’s no doubt. But considering the genetic stock she comes from, we desperately want her to not be miserable and an outcast….unless that’s what she chooses. So hard to explain. But I just want her (and the rest, when it’s time) to not dread school for social reasons. I don’t want her to be the ‘popular girl’ – actually that would be worse than her being friendless…because then she’d have ZERO common ground with her parents. But we want her to be as ‘normal’ as she chooses to be. Which sounds really bad…but again, I have a lot of trouble explaining it. Maybe the best way to say it is that I want her to be Faith. I don’t want her to change herself to fit in, but I hope that who she is doesn’t make her so ‘different’ that it’s hard for her. But this is just 1st grade, and she can easily have an identity thrust on her by other kids now, and once that happens it’s nearly impossible to undo it. So I am hoping that she finds a safe circle of friends wherein she can continue to grow and mature and become the person she’s meant to be.
Does that make sense?
Anyway, so far so good. And meanwhile, I am entering day 6 of the 2010-2011 school year. The real transition time. Being at work feels normal now, and summer break is just a memory. Which is good. And now my mind starts the process of readjusting to a new flow of time. It really takes this long for it to start happening. It all has to do with the balance between being in the moment and looking ahead. Summer is about the moment. You enjoy the now, and there’s little thought to the calendar or the day of the week. But now, back in the real world, you have to do a lot of planning ahead, and it changes the way time passes. You look forward to things…which is great, and gets you through the tough spots, but then, if you look ahead too much to some future moment, you start to skate right by the now, and when the anticipated moment finally arrives, you can’t slow your perception down enough to enjoy it and you get bummed out. At the same time, if you try to maintain the ‘here and now’ focus, the long days of work seem even longer and you get bummed about that. So it’s a balancing act, and it takes a while to get it all straightened out. Right now I’m feeling too far on the ‘time is zooming by’ side, and am trying to slow things down a bit, even if it means that work seems to take longer.
Wow. Really loquacious this morning. Anyway, keep checking in.
Matt
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