A New Year

When I was a kid the start of the school year was the beginning of the new year to me. It didn't matter that the year officially begins on Jan. 1, to me the year consisted of the months we were in school, it ended in June with the start of summer, and it began the Wednesday after Labor Day with the first day of school. Even all these years later, though the year still officially begins on Jan.1, I still look at the start of school as the beginning of the year. I am not sure what part of the year I thought summer was, probably just a nothingness and in many ways summer is still pretty much that. I still tend to look at the beginning of school as the beginning of a new year.

We are quickly approaching the new year here. In Florida where we live, school begins in August, and I am learning in many parts of the country that is now the norm. We are down to seven week days and four weekend days and it will be the first day of school.

This new year will bring many lasts with it for our house. This football season is the last season two of my boys will be eligible by age to play for the league they have played on for four seasons. We are nearly a month into practices already, and our Jamboree games are this Saturday. These will be the official start of this years season, and also the last Jamboree my boys will attend as football players. The official beginning and the official end all at one time. Football is tiring for old mom here, yet we begin this season with the bittersweet knowledge that this is the end of an era in their lives and mine.

This school year also marks my one sons Senior year. And at its end another one will have only one year left before he too will be done with high school. A stage of my parenting will be completed, and that little baby I held will turn 18. My hopes and dreams at his birth will take second place to his own. Yes I am kidding myself, they probably did that in his eyes at about age 12.

My grandson and my nephew, and my niece are all beginning the school careers as they begin kindergarten this year. Another niece begins her college career as she prepares to leave home and attend a university that is a few hour trip from home.

My 16 year old will complete his Eagle Project with the Boy Scouts of Amercia and that will close yet another chapter in the story of our lives. And the youngest if he chooses would now be eligible to begin Cub Scouts.

That is a lot of changes in one year! As we embark on the start of this new year, we do so with the dreams, hopes, and faith that we do every year, yet this time it feels different. This time of year this year is an ending to so many things, and marks the beginning of so very many more.

Over the many years of first days of school, there have always been new changes, and yet this year they seem to be different somehow with it being the ending of so many of the stages of growing up happening in our house. As with every year we will face the challenges, climb the mountains, and come to terms with the new phases we will be embarking on.

I look forward to the adventures the new year will bring, and I will no doubt feel many twinges of sadness as well, as I prepare myself for the ending of one childhood and the beginning of that same childs adulthood. I will continue to have dreams for that child and the others as well. I will continue to pray for all of them, and as I watch these last football games, and this last year of high school I will hold close to my heart the memories we are going to take with us from this year. I will engrave those memories into my heart, and I will promise myself now that amongst the tears I will surley cry as we work our way to the end of the year, I will also smile for this year and all the ones that brought us to it.