Endings aren't nearly as exciting as beginnings.
But they are immensely freeing.
I started to think about the "relief of the end" today after taking M to his 6th-grade orientation. His entry into middle school means our family has said "So long" to the elementary school we'd been a part of for something like 12 years.
It did not make me sad for him to move on.
Perhaps some of this lack of sadness was because we didn't have the "traditional" promotion ceremony or any of the before-times banquets and things, although I generally dislike that kind of stuff so I don't think I felt anything besides relief that we didn't have to do it (one of the rare positives of COVID).
Last weekend when I saw local church members doing a service project at schools to spruce them up in anticipation of school starting, I didn't feel sad that I wasn't pulling weeds at the elementary school with these volunteers as I had in years past because I was the school's "Beautification Chair."
This lack of sadness made me think, too, about the freedom of releasing myself from connections with people I didn't really know or like or have any real reason to be connected to.
Yes, I know this has been something I have mulled over here before.
It is my blog....so I chew on what I want.
Let's blame it on the obsessive part of my OCD.
I think what can and does happen to moms who spend years not working outside the home is that they sometimes confuse their own needs with their children's needs. As my children made friends, I became friendly with many of my children's friends' parents. Some of them I truly became friends with, but the vast majority were never my friends. We didn't socialize outside of our children. We don't really know anything about each other. I would never dream of calling them if I were in a bind.
But sometimes I have mistaken them for more than acquaintances.
Even though I am well beyond the angst of teenager and young adult life, adult friendships or acquaintanceships or connections can still be a little confusing, especially in our social media world.
It occurred to me that one of the most wonderful things about my children moving on is that I can give myself permission to move on as well.
I do not have to stay connected (however loosely) to people I truly don't know or admire or like or care about.
In many cases I no longer remember why we were connected, to begin with.
(That doesn't mean I wish them ill, but I want to be connected to people I admire or find funny or who make me think. I want to be connected to people who don't say or do or post stupid things unless they are being sarcastic or ironic in which case I probably like them. I want to be connected to people who I feel are kindred spirits.)
And there is a special category for people whom I don't see often but who make me feel happy when I am around them or when we do speak. I won't pull my mask up and put my sunglasses on and turn the other way down the grocery store aisle if I see them. These are the people who I think would probably come to my parent's funeral or at least send me a card in the mail to let me know they were thinking of me.
Something remarkable I also consider is how much I have changed from the time N started at the elementary school to the time M left.
I went from "friending" everyone and wanting to know everyone and be involved to being extremely selective about who I friend (and downright delighting in unfriending people). Maybe it is because when N started elementary school I was a stay-at-home mom of three children under 5 who had absolutely zero time for myself or life beyond my children. Whatever friends I had were going to come through my kids or I simply wasn't going to have friends.
The ending of things in terms of M's schooling has provided me some happiness I didn't expect to find there.
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