Last night was the parent/player volleyball meeting at school for grades 6-12. Because of the school’s small size, the volleyball coach has been letting the 6th graders play on the junior high team. My daughters’ large class brings a whopping 15 players to the team and since our volleyball team is one of the best in the state, being able to start in 6th grade is pretty darn cool.
I picked up my friend and her daughter so we could go to the meeting together. As we sat with our girls and listened to the coach talk about rules, expectations, details, etc., I was thinking how this seemingly innocuous meeting was really the first page of a new chapter in our lives. For the foreseeable future, school days will be consumed with practices, new activities, homework, games and running here and there to said games.
When the coach began to warn the girls about drinking, smoking and doing drugs, I think I visibly blanched. Um, wasn’t it just very recently that my friend and I were taking our 4-year-old daughters to dance class in their pink ballerina outfits and tutus, no thoughts of alcohol, cigarettes or crack in our, much less their, heads? Now, granted, the audience included the high school girls as well, but I still felt a bit like I’d entered some weird upside-down world: Was the coach talking to me or my daughters? Because I’m a heckuva lot closer to high school than they are.
Ha. Riiiiiiight. Except that when I stop and do the math, I’m NOT. They’re only 3 years away. I, on the other hand, am a shade over a decade past.
OK, fine. I’m closer to two decades past. Who’s counting anyway???
I’d just give anything to see those little tap shoes and pink leotards again.
Name a time (or several) when you’ve definitively felt a new chapter of your life beginning.
