The Final Stretch

Collin has a field trip today.

I'm not going.

Since Collin has started school, I've missed two events. This includes even mundane things, like passing out Valentines. I want to be there for EVERYTHING. I love watching his face light up with the smallest new experience and I hate not being there to share these new "special" days with him.

(Ignore the dribbled toothpaste down the front of his shirt...it's all we can do to get out of the house relatively clean in the morning---and yes, he insists on flipping his collar up like that. He hasn't gotten the memo that it is not 1983)

Truth be told, I hate not being there on regular days too. I wish I could go to school with him and just sit in the corner and watch. Field trip days are like my chance to hang out with him at school and be a pal. This time though, it just didn't work out.

Why? Well, remember when I gave you the rundown of what I had left for the last five weeks of the semester?

I'm down to a week. I've got everything in but two final papers. They are both 20 pages and they are both due soon. Very soon. They aren't done. They aren't even close. I can't afford to give up a full day of quiet house time to go to the Natural History Museum, where I've been with Collin at least twenty times.

The thought of going with his class, where we'd be shuffled through at their pace and with extreme stress and loudness, eh. I think I made the right choice. Still, I feel awful. I cried. The same thing I did last time when I couldn't go because they had to reschedule a cancelled field trip for a Wednesday, a day I had class. Thanks to my dumb gall bladder having decided to go haywire earlier in the semester, it's not such a good idea to ask my professors if I can just beg off for a day to go strawberry picking, right? I'd already missed a week of classes and I wasn't about to pull the hooky card.

Imagined e-mail, "Dr Dr. X, Thanks for understanding about my surgery earlier this semester. I know I came to class all drugged up and I might have said some weird stuff. Thanks for understanding about that too. Oh, and thanks for being cool that I barely understood the reading for that time period too. I did my best. But, can I go strawberry picking with my son?"

I know these are the choices that working parents, or parents with three or four children make every day, but it isn't a choice I was used to making. It makes me feel awful.

Collin didn't seem to mind. He said, "Aren't you coming?" when I turned to leave. When I said no, he said, "oh, that's okay. I have my BACKPACK!" Apparently, to a four year-old, I'm replaceable by the novelty of getting to wear a backpack to carry his sack lunch. Okay, but to me, the experience of being with him isn't replaceable.

I'm so glad that this tiny span of time, this one semester of pure madness, is limited. Next semester is one class and thesis units. I'm in charge of how I spend my time. While a thesis is certainly not messing around, my time is so much more flexible and I can't wait to have more home hours to be with him. I've missed him so much.

It's so close to being over, I can almost taste it! Now, to work on the writing....forty pages...ready, set, Go!

Oh, and p.s. I did fix his shoes so he wouldn't walk in circles all day.