My generation? Our kids are starting school now. Wow. The next generation is really here, fully realized and moving away from the precious innocence of infancy and bridging the gap toward being full partakers of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. There's no way to go back, no way to shield our beautiful babies from knowing, for better or worse, the bad and the beautiful that this world holds for them.
Oh, my heart.
And in my home, the start of school has an added dimension, because Daddy is a teacher. I had a little epiphany last night about why school makes me sad: in a short-term way, because inevitably, school starts and suddenly we don't see Daddy for two weeks (not only are there 12-hour days to work around, but the first two weekends are always full of conferences, so we don't see him on in-between days, either). But the bigger, longer reason that school makes me sad is that, especially in the past two years, school begins and Daddy is perpetually exhausted. For the next 10 months. I mean, except for a short business call and saying prayers with the boys at bedtime, Daddy went to bed at 7:45 last night.
And so it begins. Yes, of course there are lots of wonderful things that come along with the school year, and I LOVE learning and so far have two boys who also LOVE learning. And I have a hard-working, wildly gifted husband who LOVES learning and also loves to teach. We're fans of knowledge, don't get me wrong.
But school makes me sad in a lot of ways, and that's just that.
"The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'" Genesis 2:15-17
"I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil--this is God's gift to man." Ecclesiastes 3:12-13
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