May 27

Only Brady had a minimum (also known as half) day of school today, so I did the healthy thing and walked over to pick him up. 

It was a lovely, cool afternoon and the company was pleasant, so although I was regaled with tales of the injustices that transpired during the tennis racket baseball game his class played against the school staff first thing this morning, it was a good walk. 

Given that Brady will be promoted to middle school a week from today, this was very likely my final walk home from an elementary school with one of my children. (And given the distance between our house and both the middle and high schools, it was likely our last walk home from school period.) Although I haven't processed most of those thoughts --of Brady going to middle school and Isaac going to high school and Abby moving to Chicago to go to college-- I know the emotional onslaught is coming. 

But tonight, with those big thoughts looming and pending as they draw nearer in the windshield of my life, I'm deliberately thinking small. And I'm just grateful for the small moments that have meant so much, like all of the walks home from elementary school that I see in the rearview --with kids in strollers and babies strapped to my chest and snacks in the basket underneath and boxes of fall-print tissues and backpacks and roses picked from the yard and giggles and 10 minutes at the park that became 60 and a multitude of friends in tow-- that I've had in the past with my bunch.