What a Year!

Have you ever felt like you knew what was going to happen before it did?  Well, at the end of grade five, I just knew that grade six would be my best year yet.  It was going to feel so great to be the oldest in the school!  I just hated the way the previous grade sixes bossed us around.  Not that I would ever consider bossing anyone else around, ha ha.  It’s just that for  many years, you feel like there’s so much you can’t do, and you spend your whole life waiting till you can do it.  Then, of course, when you’re finally old enough, you find out it really isn’t so great after all.

I’ve sort of gotten off the subject.  I was right about grade six.  At least for the most part I was.  We all seemed so much more mature.  It was a comfortable feeling, a secure feeling.  Mom didn’t even have to wake me up in the morning anymore, that’s how anxious I was to go to school.  She still has to wake Jim, but sixteen year old boys like to sleep in almost as much as they like girls.

I remember the first day of school this year.  I must have woken up with the birds.  The sun was barely up over the horizon, and I was in the kitchen wolfing down my meager breakfast.  I don’t like to eat too much in the morning; it just might spoil that soon to be attractive figure of mine.

Mom must have heard me down in the kitchen, because I felt a presence behind me, and there she was, just standing there smiling and looking like she knew just how I felt.  Sometimes it’s uncanny how she does that.

Grabbing a cup of black coffee, she sat at the cluttered, crumby table, and asked quietly, “Are you excited about the first day of school?”

Not breaking the unwritten code of us kids, which allows us to tell parents only what we must, I muttered, “I guess so.”

She just sat silently sipping her scalding coffee and watching me.

I could contain my enthusiasm no longer.  I broke the code of ethics.  “Mom, I just know this is going to be the best year yet!  What can possibly go wrong?  I can feel it in my bones, everything that happens is going to be new and wonderful!”