Limping and Hurtling

toward the end of middle school (again)

Thursday is the last day of the school year for my youngest and I am, on a daily basis, performing the Sisyphean task of motivating a 13 year old in mid-June (God bless the teachers, every one). Like my 13 year old, I too feel a lack of focus lately and, truth be told, I sometimes wonder if I’m the boulder in this analogy.

There are 10 and 8 years respectively between our older two children and the youngest. Sometimes, that extra decade of parenting before he came along offers perspective. And other times that perspective looks a lot like fatigue. 

I’ve been through the dynamics of middle school before (do those dynamics ever end, really?), and as much as I wish that repeating each phase with each child offers some sort of wisdom, so far it has not. My 13 year old is different from his siblings. I am a different parent than I was a decade ago. In short, the cumulative experience of navigating the middle school years with my older two kids (in addition to my own middle school years) has taught me…well, very little.

Does this look like someone who can dispense advice about middle school? 

I think a lot about a MoMA exhibit I saw a few years ago entitled Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time. The exhibit was comprehensive and her breadth of work amazing. But what really struck me was the amount of times O’Keeffe repeated the same paintings. Throughout the exhibit were groupings of small-scale works where she had painted the same subject ten different times (probably more, but there’s only so much wall space in a gallery). She kept reexamining her subjects, seeing something new with each pass.

Repetition, we know, sharpens our skills. Makes us more adept at a task. But sometimes repetition simply broadens our perspective. It helps us to notice similarities as well as differences and to make sense of old patterns in new ways. 

For my son, these last few half-days of school will feel like they’re dragging on forever. He will complain and groan. I will feign enthusiasm and get him out the door. On Thursday, we will limp across the finish line of 7th grade. But, here’s what I know: we’re also hurtling toward the end of middle school at warp speed. We’re taxiing the runway to high school and from there I know how fast the next few years will go. 

I may not have all any of the answers to make the last year of middle school easier. Or even to make the last few mornings of this school year go smoother. 8th grade is going to bring changes; I don't know what they are yet. But, I will keep looking at these strange and awkward years, knowing that eventually another picture will emerge.  

---

Acorns for the Week:

(aka joys I hope take root)

I loved this tender moment with Weird Al Yankovic on NPR’s Wild Card podcast with Rachel Martin (also, including Weird Al in a post about middle school feels super-appropriate):

npr

A post shared by @npr

For those of you who are limping/hurtling toward another big transition and, perhaps, beginning to look at colleges with your teen, I offer you this: Hope, Lipstick and the Open Road. Something I wrote a few years ago about that wondrous and wacky time. Stay strong.