Writer’s Block

It’s not that I haven’t had anything to say…it’s just…I haven’t had anything to say.

Sigh.

I’ve had lots of ‘thoughts’ about things to write about, topics near and dear to my heart and my original intent when I started blogging, but nothing really resonated with me that I hadn’t already touched on before.

Kearney High School’s graduation ceremony was last weekend, and friends launched their children into the world. Having been there and done that without the benefit of pomp and circumstance, I see no reason to rehash the unconventional story of my firstborn, Erik.

He starts his junior year of college in the fall. Andrew, his younger brother, is finishing up his first year of high school even as I type.

Whoa. But covered that ground too.

Thirty-five years ago I was finishing up my first year of high school in Sault Ste. Marie, located along the Michigan/Canada border. My summer job at Dairy Queen was all lined up, for the princely sum of $1.40 an hour. I can still make a mean swirl cone, as I demonstrated at a soft serve ice cream bar graduation party we went to last weekend. It was a lovely reception, as was another one we attended.

The custom here is to display a graduating senior’s memorabilia. I started to panic, being the uptight planner that I am, because I tossed a LOT of stuff when we moved here two years ago. True, I have file folders filled with some mementoes. However, instead of making it into the filing cabinet, most items ended up scattered around my home office. Balancing working fulltime, writing, parenting, volunteering, wife-ing (not very well at times) and daughter-ing (not very well at times) simply did not leave much time for careful organization of all the important keepsakes.

As last weekend waned, I said to Andrew that I wish I’d saved the laminated ‘good job’ monthly certificates his kindergarten teacher passed out if there were no ‘yellow’ or ‘red’ lights. I wistfully reminisced about one heralding an ‘Awesome April’ at North Elementary School in Morgantown, West Virginia.

So we went down to one of my filing cabinets and rummaged through all the folders dealing with writing-related things. In a faded yellow folder marked ‘Andrew’ I found one laminated certificated presented all those years ago to my now six-foot-tall soon-to-be-15-year-old: “Awesome April.”

Sometimes when you have to let go, you hold onto the most important things of all.