Last Day of Finals

My youngest son and middle child just walked out the door with his red & black backpack, that cost me $40 in the middle-of-the-semester, secured firmly on his back. The padded shoulder straps and back padded panel assure me that he will not have muscle fatigue carrying his books to school on THE LAST DAY OF FINALS.

I can sip my morning French Press with a sigh of relief and hope for better days to come.

My son is a freshman in high school. He is fourteen years old. Enough said right there. It has been one arduous journey through first semester and today is THE LAST DAY OF FINALS!!!!! I feel like doing the Snoopy happy dance.

This is the brilliant but scatterbrained son whose first backpack came to a tragic end under the weight of disorganization. It just wouldn't zip up anymore so I made a trek to Target to the luggage section to find him as close to the top-of-the-line, make-it-through-high-school back pack I could find. I wanted to make sure he entered finals week fully prepared.

I graduated in 1982. It has been a long time since I had to sit in a room of my teenage peers to remember everything I learned for 4 1/2 months. Yet, I felt like I was returning there with all my emails and scheduling of his study time and reviews of his work. And watching him struggle under the weight of seven classes.

It is going to be a great Christmas break. I won't write any emails to teachers or remind him to practice his French or worry about him losing that $125 calculator for Physics and Geometry. I can sleep in without waking him up at 6 o'clock-in-the-morning or making sure he eats a good breakfast and drinks his chocolate soy milk and flax seed mixture. It will be glorious. Yes, TODAY IS THE LAST DAY OF FINALS and this freshman mom survived it all!