Friday was my 9-year-old's last day of third grade, and I am writing this on my 43rd birthday. All last week, I saw the photos on social media that I knew I would see: the kids posing next to their chalk boards or letter boards, the juxstaposition of first day and last day photos, the comments about how fast it all went by and what a crazy year it was.
I didn't get a good first day of school photo of my kid last year, partially because she was learning remotely and her first day of school was kind of a hot mess (for us personally, not because of her teacher or her school at all) but also because I seem not to be the kind of person who is capable of capturing the moments that make for good #momstagram content. And on the last day of school, I half-hugged my kid goodbye while on a work Zoom and realized that I had, once again, failed to brush her hair.
Today is my birthday and there will not be any pictures of me on this day either. My 9-year-old and I looked through my camera roll recently and the breakdown went something like this:
Most of the selfies are terrible and embarassing, but the pics of the dead mouse in the ceiling are pretty impressive. (Also, follow me at @breadandrosesvintage if you feel like buying any clothes from me; I promise there are zero dead mouse photos in my feed.)
I am feeling all the weird feelings I usually feel about birthdays, thinking vaguely about how I am, somehow, still the same person I remember being as a kid, but also a different person because I am now an adult. I am thinking, too, about how astonishing it is to be in the presence of a young person who sometimes looks and sounds and acts like 9-year-old me, but is in fact some other 9-year-old, and that I am not a 9-year-old anymore but am the mother of one instead.
Mostly I am just taking a moment, on this humid June evening in which the Yankees are losing painfully to the Red Sox, to reflect on the passage of time, in the sort of way that a 40-something mom might do at the end of a particularly rough school year and after a delightful birthday gin and tonic. Thirty years ago I had my first kiss. Twenty years ago I was living in a $500/month apartment in Portland. Ten years ago I was pregnant, in a new house with a new dog. Ten years from now my kid will be an adult and my pets will be dead, but maybe there will be new pets? A lot of things will be different, but what will stay the same?
What images will I record of the next ten years? I'm aiming for fewer dead mice and screenshots, and maybe more photos of me. Of us. Of my family and what this life of ours looks like. There might not be cute chalkboards and there definitely, absolutely will not be matching outfits. But I'd like there to be something.
This has been a particularly sentimental edition of Think of the Children, a weekly newsletter about the intersection of parenting and education, and sometimes also gin, the Yankees and dead mice. If you'd like to be featured in my newsletter, please let me know! If you're new here, won't you consider subscribing?