I had lunch with T.Puzzle this week at school. I wasn’t able last week because I was under the weather. That fact that I had to skip out on him didn’t phase him one bit. He told me that ‘he wasn’t going to miss me at all’ and proceeded to apparently have a perfectly wonderful lunch without me. His indifferent attitude had me questioning scheduling a lunch with either of my boys. Was it possible that only I benefitted from this weekly check-in? After further investigation, T.Puzzle admitted that yes, he would still like to have Mom come for lunch but he is okay if for some reason I can’t make it. I didn’t wait for him to change his mind and told him I would seem him soon.
As I sat at the parents’ table with him, his teacher stopped by and graciously thanked me for my emails. She said that she appreciated staying in touch. What she doesn’t know is that for every one email I send her, I’d actually like to send about a thousand more. I wish she would live tweet or video stream every significant move T.Puzzle makes. If T.Puzzle learned something, she should let me know as quickly as possible. If he gets out of line, if he exhibits outstanding behavior (we all have dreams, don’t we?), if he says something cute or funny…basically, if he does anything at all, I want to know about it. Same goes for Full Speed and his teacher, too.
Instead, I constantly coach myself to leave my kids and their teachers alone. I fill my time in other ways while always holding images of what I picture my boys doing at school (I tend to picture them doing only amazing stuff, it’s much more fun that way), and that has to be enough. It doesn’t feel like enough, but it has to be.