Almost There.

When Hallee started school in 2002, high school seemed a million miles and a million years away. Light years. Eons. It’s so hard to look ahead with special needs kids, because you are so focused on Just. Getting. Through. Today. Just get through one more IEP. One more OT session. One more PT session. One more clinic, hospital, doctor’s visit. Add into the mix a newborn…I was 7 months pregnant when Hal started kindergarten, and I look back now and wonder how I did it. The years have literally sped by. I have very few memories of specific events. First days of new grades, achievements. I know they happened, but I can’t see them clearly. I never had the time to sit back and rejoice in the moment at that moment. It’s all been a bit of a blur right up until a few years ago when some inner switch got flipped in Hallee. After years and years of HATING school..HATING IT..something clicked. I don’t know if it was brought about by hormones, finally having the maturity to deal..I just don’t know. But I went from having to physically carry her into school flailing and crying, no small feat since she is now bigger than I am…to having her feeling bereft and adrift when she’s not there. She has friends now. Not just kids whose name she knows, but friends that she looks for and interacts with voluntarily. She has a purpose now. At her high school, there is a student kitchen that she works in, shopping trips she must take, a school store that the special needs kids run. She has her weight-lifting friends (She will letter in weight-lifting this year. Really.) She has been ready to go back to school since early July. At this late date, she is sick of me, sick of her sister, sick of vacation. She has been making me show her the calendar and crossing off days for weeks now and she knows that in a few days the bus...her bus, will come to get her and take her back to her friends, her routine.

I really feel a bit gypped here. Now that she finally, finally loves school and is thriving, she only has 3 years left. Then what? A new program? A new bus? Will there be funding for any kind of program for young adults in 3 years? Right now it sure doesn’t look that way, not where we live. How do you explain to a kid who doesn’t understand that school is over forever? When she knows the school is there, sees the buses every day, in her mind of course she can go to school. Well, that’s a worry for another time. One I will certainly have to plan for, but just not this morning. This morning when the girls wake up, we are going to lay out first day of school outfits, make sure we have enough socks, matching hair elastics, lunch boxes and all that good stuff. Mad has open house tonight where we will meet her new 5th grade teacher and see which friends she’ll be together with. 5th grade. I’m not sure how that happened, either. She’s growing up so much and so fast. I want to remember this. Today, I am going to live in the moment and remember it. Today I will be grateful for what we have achieved. Me as a mom, the girls as individuals and us together as a family.

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