What Might Have Been

A panic wells up inside me and once again it is the calendar. When you thought things couldn't get any more filled up you begin your two year term as SAM president and your little toddler graduates middle school and trots off to high school.

Putting the dates on the Fall calendar for marching band and confirmation and the SAM workshop meetings might push me over into the second glass of cab. The spark of joy seems a little volatile, like it might accidentally catch fire and burn the house down.

This morning was the 8th Grade Presidential Academic Honors Breakfast. . . for those students who received a 3.5 or hight GPA throughout all of middle school. Calvin got to play the 20 minute prelude on the piano as the folks were gathering. Ten kids were brought up on stage for a second honor, that of the 4.0 GPA. There were nine girls and Max.

Filing into the breakfast Oliver jabs Calvin on the arm and says--what did you get the A- in?
P.E. in six grade.
What about you Oliver?
Art.

So--the running of the mile and the drawing of a rabbit kept the boys off the platform. C'est la vie. They laughed it off.

This morning's breakfast was for pretty much everyone who didn't flunk. Nonetheless, thank you O'bama for your signature on the dotted line of academia.

The speaker, an Eagan High senior, caught me off guard and choked me up to that embarrassing level. She was so perky and happy and all about the joy of middle school (yeah, right) and then told a story about how she was failing math and Mr. Oase (Calvin's homeroom teacher and math teacher) ate lunch with her every day for a month until she got caught up.

Pretend to check a text while you search frantically for the kleenex.

Her mom added to me in the hall outside that that math month also coincided with the death of her husband, the girls' dad.

Holy cow. Search trench coat pocket for additional kleenex.

Then the perky girl reminded us that two of their classmates who should have been there, weren't, and how the class of 2019 suffered losses inappropriate for their age. Give up on kleenex, use trench coat sleeve.

I thought about Mr. Oase and Mr. Herem and Patricia Bauer and the whole host of heavenly angels who escorted my son through the awkward and potentially dismembering years of middle school. If only for one P.E. teacher we would have had nary a scrape.

As Calvin looked around the cafeteria for his buddies a cute girl hung out a little too long collecting the orange juice at our table and I thought about what might have been. How middle school might have gone. What social horrors we skirted.

Last week I put the ballet bun in Mary's hair in the middle school bathroom between the 7th and 8th grade band concerts. This morning I rushed home and did the "two braided pig tales" required for optimum self confidence in the 4th grade talent show. I can do this in 78.4 seconds if the hair is already brushed.

I restocked the purse kleenex. These kids are FRAGILE. . .

But what I'm really trying to say is about the teachers. They are more than saints. They take these gangly kids trying to look cool but the pants are so very short and pretend they actually care about what they are motor mouthing about for 20 minutes after school and make them feel like they are loved and belong and by virtue of those actions, whether genuine or feigned the kid actually is loved and belongs and finds his way and is caught smiling profusely at the end of year breakfast.

Lord, help me to listen to every child as these teachers have listened to my child and see the best as they have seen the best. And to build up every child because you just never know what might have been if they hadn't had you. And Lord, if the p.e. grade is ever borderline, help me to round it up.  
Amen.