Melancholy

August and September have traditionally been pretty melancholy months for me.  July is usually cram packed full of holidays and reunions and visits with family, and then comes August and the realization that school will soon be starting and summer will be over.  When I was in school, and  my kids were in school, it was an exciting time too, with shopping and preparing for a new school year.  The busyness and the excitement of a new school year usually help to offset the melancholy.   This year DD4, my baby, my youngest, will be a Senior in High School, and we really don't have much shopping to do this year.  This is  an exciting and a happy time, but also a sad and melancholy time too.  A 23 year long era of having kids in public school is about to end.  My kids are almost all grown up!  To add to the sadness, DD2 will be soon leaving for grad school, and our house will be one daughter emptier.  Sending kids off to school always makes me sad.  Happy too, but  a lot of sad.

This morning I woke at 6 am, before the alarm, and could not go back to sleep, so of course I got up to find something to do.  I was a bit surprised that it was still so dark at 6 am already.  We haven’t had any early morning commitments this summer, and what with so many of the family working evening/night time schedules, and being the natural night owls that we are, I’ve fallen into the habit of sleeping in later this summer.  Earlier this summer  when I was often up at 6, it was obviously morning time!  Even this Monday when DD4 needed to be ready to leave for camp at 7 am I didn’t notice the darkness.  Such sadness that our hemisphere is getting darker already! 

Yes, we have missed DD4 this week, but trust that she is surviving a week surrounded by multitudes of young ladies and leaders  at  Camp.  Hopefully she has had some fun times with some fun girls.  I had high hopes of being very proactive and accomplishing much stuff this week while she was gone (ie, writing, weeding, cleaning), but actually haven’t been very motivated.  DD2 and I have done a bit of mattress shopping, as she needs to know what she likes and wants for a new bed before she’s faced with actually buying a bed on her own once she get to grad school.   But mostly after coming home from a hectic day at work, I have been just reading a bit more than usual, and have spent more time perusing some of my favorite blogs than I normally do, so it’s been a rather restful week actually.  Maybe I’ll get my act together and do better at the chores and cleaning and weeding etc. next week.

This has actually been a monumental year in that we did not have even one child moving this past spring!  The first time in almost ten years!  It was heavenly!  But now this month we have two daughters moving.    DD3 will need to move home for a week or two, then back to her new apartment, which means that she will need to commute almost an hour to work each day for a while.  And we will need to store her things here, all while DD2 is getting packed up to leave for Grad School. 

So, how do you and your family deal with new school year changes?