Speeding By

I knew back when Alyssa started her freshman year that her four years of high school would fly by.

I knew that I needed to try and cherish every moment, every band concert, each evening at home watching television with her (at the time, we were engrossed in The Middle and The Goldbergs), very school musical, every track meet, every homecoming dance and every prom.

I knew that the days would drag but the weeks, months and years would sprint past us.

And yet here we are, on the cusp of her high school graduation and I’m looking back and wondering where it all went. We have pictures to prove we lived it all but it seems like just last week she was rehearsing for her role in Shrek and yet that was freshman year.

She’s already pulling away. She has been for months. She basically spent the weekend of prom away from home. And that’s okay. That’s how it should be. But it’s bittersweet for me and Tom. We already miss her and she’s not even truly gone yet.

I want so much for her. I want her to enjoy every minute of her life, not be waiting for the next thing and then the next. I want her to wring the joy and fun out of each experience, to know that this one moment can be the best until the next best moment comes along.

I hope I’ve instilled even a little bit of whimsy in her. I hope she takes time to find the whimsical trees planted beside office buildings and the pleasure of sleeping late. I hope she sees that the world can be so very magical even though there is so much that needs to be changed and fixed.

High school isn’t the best life has to offer but it can be amazing. I think she’s had a good four years. She’s made wonderful friendships, found love, worked hard and played harder…I hope.

We still have years of love and fun ahead of us.

I just wish I could slow things down, even just a little, for her and for me. I want to freeze these moments and step through my magical tree once in a while to revisit the evenings on the couch, the times around the dinner table, the Saturdays at lunch and the moments when she was fourteen and obsessed with Pentatonix. I’d go back to when she was four and pretending to be a horse, or a lion or the little mermaid, just to watch her, to soak her in, her innocence, her beauty, her imagination. I’d preserve some of those precious parts of her and give back to her so she can fall back on them when life gets hard and boring and lackluster. I’d give her those moments back so she can use them to get through adulthood with a little bit of whimsy still inside her.

She’s growing up so fast; too fast. I want to grab her and hug her close and remind her that her entire adult life is ahead of her and she needs to slow down and be a kid for as long as she can. The whole wide world is waiting for her and she’s going to do amazing things in it but she doesn’t have to do them all right now. She can stop for a minute and just remember that little girl who bravely switched schools when she was seven, who made new friends and played Hunger Games with those new friends in 4th grade. She can be the girl who memorized all the members of Pentatonix birthdays and quizzed me regularly to ensure I was paying attention. She can play board games on a Friday night and sleep in on Saturday, hugging her stuffed dog in her sleep.

The world will be there when she’s ready and I know she’s ready now. But maybe I’m not quite there yet.

A Prom

Prom We all remember what was happening last year, right? I was at home with my entire family. We were attempting to finish up the school year via Zoom and trying to stay healthy and safe.

This year is different. Many (but not enough) of us are getting vaccinated or are vaccinated and we’re slowly re-emerging into our lives.

The girls have been in school all year. Olivia was quarantined as a close contact once this year, way back in October. Alyssa, somewhat to her own annoyance, was never quarantined. She continued to work, go to school, hang out with a select number of friends (many of whom also worked with her) and basically has lived her life.

And on the first of May, she got to go to her senior prom.

They sort of had a prom last year. If you call getting dressed up, meeting at a nearby hotel, having dinner served by your parents and then getting prizes a prom. I mean, there were no outside guests allowed, only juniors and seniors that attend our school were allowed. If you were lucky enough to be dating either a junior or senior and were a junior or senior yourself, well, hey, you got to go with a date. It was fine. They were all lovely.

But this year…they got to have a ‘real’ prom. They got dressed up, they went to each other’s houses for pictures, the prom was held at the school. The junior moms decorated the gym and there was dinner and dancing in the cafeteria (our school calls it the ‘auditoria’ which is stupid and I won’t use that word other than to point out that it’s stupid.)

Olivia was a little worried on Thursday about where she’d each lunch because the cafeteria had been overtaken by the juniors and seniors for prom.

After the ‘social hour’, during which family and friends could come (if they had a ticket because there’s still a pandemic out there) and sit in the bleachers in the gym and each couple would be announced and proceed around the gym, stopping at three different points for pictures.

It was cute.

And fun.

And the senior class, because they’re lovely people, voted the exchange student the prom queen this year. She’s so sweet and fun and I’m so happy for her. She’s from Italy and I hope that her ‘abroad’ experience hasn’t been too awful, seeing as she’s stuck in freaking Edon, Ohio, population 850+ give or take 10. Talk about a disappointment.

But like I said, she’s fun and seems to be making the best of her “American” experience. She was a cheerleader for football and basketball. She had a supporting lead role in the musical. She’s running track and just putting herself out there. It’s more than I can say I did my senior year and I was still in the same school I’d started at when I was five. So…perspective.

I feel for the seniors of 2020 who missed out on all of this. I know most of them have moved on and sure, they have quite the story to tell but it still sucks. They’ll never get their high school senior year back. And I feel for the parents of those seniors. They missed out on so much too.

Spirit Week

Once again, they’ve moved everything forward in the year in hopes of cramming everything fun in before school is shut down for good for the year. Not that we’re being pessimistic or anything, it’s just…you know, Covid time.

So the third week of school, the second full week, was Spirit Week, aka Homecoming week. This is usually later in the football season, alas, I’m sure they moved it to the second home game (which, coincidentally, was the second game of the season) just so they could say they had it.

Huh. Anyway, whoever came up with the ‘Spirit’ days for this year was, well, less than creative.

They tried to be punny with it by titling the whole thing with something like “Bombers: Turn “UP” the Spirit. Each day, in turn, had some sort of UP in it.

Monday: Mix “UP” Day – wear your clothes backwards – Olivia declared she was NOT going to wear her clothes backwards because that would just annoy her all day. She did let me braid her hair from the bottom up (I almost capitalized the up back there but just couldn’t do it.) That was it for her spirit for Monday.

Tuesday: Grown “UP” day – dress like a grown-up – she decided to wear a leopard print cardigan and some matching shoes because then she’d look like a grown up lady aka an Edon mom. Hahahaha. That’s my girl.

Wednesday: Squad “UP” Day – class colors – Olivia’s class color is black. And guess what else this day was? Picture day, because why wouldn’t it be picture day? I suppose class color day is better than backwards day. Her teacher told Olivia she could bring a ‘picture day’ outfit to change in to but we all know how that would work out. So thanks but no, I’m fine with her seventh grade picture being of her in a black shirt. Maybe we can say it was the start of her twenty-four hour goth phase.

Thursday: Dress “UP” Day – dress your best – she wore pink because that’s how she dresses up. So much for the goth stage.

Friday: Bomber “UP” – wear your blue and gray – this one is self-explanatory.

I think that if they hadn’t tried to put the stupid UP in each day, they might have been able to be a bit more creative. Alas, they didn’t ask for my opinion and if they had I’d have been all…meh.

So since someone else was willing to do the mental work of coming up with this stupid list of spirit days, I should just shut my face.

Senior Night

Senior athlete night is usually the last home game of the season.

Alas, with things as messed up as they are right now, we aren’t sure which home game will be the last of the season.

And so, Alyssa’s school decided to hold senior night senior night on the first home game of the season.

I mean, for all we know, the first home game might be the last, right? I mean, seriously, though.

So we got an email the Monday before the Friday of that game, letting us know that all seniors who were participating in fall sports would be honored at the home game that Friday.

Alyssa, for those not in the know, is in marching band, which is considered a fall sport. I know.

But those kids work REALLY hard. They go to band camp for weeks during the summer, they work hard to learn the music and the choreography for the half-time show.

I’ll be honest. I was in the marching band in high school and even I didn’t think of it as a sport back then but whatever. If the school wants to recognize them as fall athletes, who am I to complain? I’m glad my girl gets the accolades she deserves.

The way the senior athletes are recognized is that they’re given a card to fill out detailing their interests, the things they participate in, their parents’ names, you know, the usual.

Then, at the start of the game, the student and their parents are introduced to the spectators and the card is read describing the student.

When we found out about Senior Night early that week, Alyssa informed Tom, “Dad, you’re going to that football game.”

He gave a look that said he didn’t think he was going to the game.

She told him, “You’re going. You have to walk on the field with me and Mom.”

I assured him that there would be fewer spectators there this year because Governor DeWine has made it so that only parents and immediate family members can attend sporting events for the foreseeable future. Football at Edon is a pretty big thing. The entire community usually comes out for the home games.

Not this year! Nope. Each student athlete was given four vouchers to be given out for people to come to the games. This will ensure crowd control.

Somewhat mollified, Tom agreed to attend the ceremony honoring the athletes. “But,” he amended, “I’m NOT staying for the game.”

Duh.

No one expected him to stay for the game. He and Olivia can scamper away as soon as the ceremony is over.

I will stay, though, because hello, I have to watch the half-time show. That’s the whole reason I go to the games anyway. I always say that I’m only there for the band. I have to watch my girl’s last half-time show. This might be the only performance they give this year and I’ll be there for it.

We’re going to wring every single moment out of this senior year that we can. We realize that it might be even more abbreviated than last year’s senior year. So…here we go.