High School, Like Being Pregnant, Only Different

I glowed all through my two pregnancies. I loved being pregnant and felt blessed and  beautiful, healthy and alive and happy. Despite the normal pregnancy disturbances, like peeing every few hours at night, it was a very special time for me.  UNTIL.

Up until the ninth month when I became so uncomfortable and stressed that I couldn’t wait to give birth. It happened with both my children, same time, same bat channel. The angel inside became too big, too frisky and punched like a son of a bitch, incessantly.  I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t walk, I waddled and I couldn’t get comfortable anytime or anywhere. At that point, the little angel you have carried and protected in your womb (whom you have nurtured, sung to, played music for and sang the alphabet song a thousand times)  becomes a devil. The child you wanted to carry forever becomes the baby you can’t wait to give birth to. GET IT OUT OF ME NOW. I’ve had enough.

We have two teenagers in High School, one is a Junior and one is a Sophomore. I often get sad thinking about them leaving home and going to college. It will be “so quiet” I say to my husband as he rolls his eyes upwards. There will be only one year between our son going to college and our daughter. We will be empty nesters and that reminds me of really old people. HOWEVER. In the last six months they have become incredibly obnoxious each in his or her own way. If I start recanting some of the things they do I immediately get angina.  Let’s just say, we are at a point, where we ARE FINE with them to going to college. We might even relish some quiet time instead of all the yelling, arguing, cursing, fighting….that has gone on for years.  IT’S GETTING OLD. FAST. There are certain fights that my son will initiate just to fight. To him, it’s a sport. He will end up yelling up a storm with my husband. To me, he uses curse words that I hate and find incredibly disrespectful. This was the boy I was raising to be a good, solid, young man. You wouldn’t know it from the way he speaks. He apparently hasn’t learned that I am a parent and not his posse of friends that curse together, those macho things. Our daughter, known in the past to, shall we say, interpret the truth differently than we do, provokes her brother, flies under the radar and basically tries to get her older brother in trouble all the time. She often succeeds and while we hear some interesting tales, she will rat him out in a heartbeat if it means saving her own backside.  It may just be her life goal to see how much trouble she can get him into.

So, when the children are packing up their suitcases for college, we will be ready. For a little peace, a little quiet, for doors that are not slammed shut, and rooms that  don’t look like hell holes. Rooms that if, and only if you dare, step inside you are risking your life and your decrepit limbs.

Remember, kids, we love you and will miss you, don ‘t forget to call. Have a safe trip.  Love, Mom and Dad