James "graduated" from 8th grade today. Luckily, in our district, they don't actually "graduate" them so I didn't have to get dressed up, drive to the school, fight for parking, etc--all so I could cry in public. I did my crying at home. I have, without fail, cried at every single first day of school and every single last day of school, for both James and Nicole. Yes, I'm one of those moms. The ones who can't manage to get a grip. It has been a rough couple of years for James, academically. Well not really academically--he does rather well--but getting-along-with-teachers-ly. James has become a bit more social minded. IE. he talks a lot, wherein he did not before.
Because I start off each new school year with an email to each of his teachers explaining who James is and his life story (the condensed version) and an entreaty to contact me if there is anything "out of the norm", I get a lot of phone calls. Well, not a lot, but, in my world, any phone call from school is a lot. One or two of his teachers gave me a minute by minute account of what James did or didn't do to annoy them. It got rather, for lack of a better work, annoying for myself. Except I brought it on myself by asking. Lesson learned.
So James is off to high school (*sob), with his mother somewhere lurking there behind him, yelling,"Keep your head up, for God's sake!"
