T-MINUS 2!!

OMG, the day is near; the kids are almost, finally, home!! Remember them? Those adorable mini-mes who you wrote once a day and cyber-stalked at least five times as often? Those perfect little angels who you once fed-exed whatever whim or lost object befell them on their amazing journey toward competence and independence? Make ado they would not, especially for the first half of their summer. You’re a parent gosh darn it!

In the beginning, there was motivation. Any minimally substantive “in” at a camp was exploited to the tenth degree. There was elation – even when Companion did the dirty work and scoured 400 brownish pony-tails and slope-y nose jobs to find your daughter's, you then had the will, the gumption, the drive to keep looking, poring through the endless stream of photos looking for context. There was worry. UPS wouldn’t (they couldn’t!) strike when those precious poos needed hair-ties, would they?

But then, slowly but surely, the bloom fell off the rose, and our parental brains yawned. We got a little absent-minded. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to find a parent among us who has Punk-posted their kid a letter in the past three weeks. Let alone one who overnighted a new water bottle. We are all in sync --- a step below “outta sight, outta mind,” but a step above doing much of anything to prove that.

BUT NOW. Oh, now! Now that we are T minus 2 or 3 or 4 out, well. it’s different! We’ve got our mama mojos back. We can’t wait to squeeze those precious little cheeks and feed them all the spicy tuna crispy rice their pint-sized hearts desire. And we should enjoy it!! There’s nothing better than basking in the honeymoon phase with your own kids.

Soon enough, they’ll be nudging you off the sofa, or grunting one-word answers in your direction, or asking you to find that “sick” Fuwa Fuwa cake that they had on their trip to Toronto. Soon enough they’ll have their heads buried back deep in their phones, asking you to stop talking, and to drive them somewhere, anywhere. Soon enough, they, you, we all will be back where we started, living 10 for 2.

Welcome Home!