Category: School

Posted in Fathers, Fragile Life, Insight, Round Two, School, Teens

Late for School

Posted on by Kelly Salasin

Beyond the awakening is the fragility to which i am most attuned;
Because hasn’t spring brought both love & heartache, conception & loss, burials and re-births?

How do I explain what it is to see a parent outside the highschool, pacing back and forth on her cellphone. Or another, a father, walking briskly toward the building with cleats in his arms. Or my own cheek still charged with the bristle of my son’s as he kissed me goodbye and hopped out of the driver’s seat… the car emptied of his breakfast, his music, his overbearing book bag.

I remain still. Bound to the passenger side of this empty vehicle.

Waiting? Watching? What?

The speed of time?

How suddenly the landscape becomes lush?

No matter how inconvenienced we are. These children. These lives. Ready to fly. Are everything.

Even as we let them go. Little by little. And then all at once. Holding on to the simplest ways to say:

We are.

We were once.

One.

Posted in Mid-Life Mama, Milestone Moments, Round Two, School, Teens

the firsts of the lasts…

Posted on by Kelly Salasin


I didn’t have time to really think about the fact that tonight was my last parent-teacher conference, ever.

And to bring it full circle, the very last of tonight’s meetings was with with his collegiate sociology teacher who also happens to be his… father.

While more than a dozen years ago, his earliest conferences in preschool and kindergarten included me, his mother, as parent and teacher.

Posted in Insight, Mid-Life Mama, Nuts & Bolts, School, Teens

Flip the morning!

Posted on by Kelly Salasin

(Something to remember in September.)

Communal first. Personal last!

Because I didn’t figure this out until my second TEEN, and since my nesting days are numbered, I wanted to share this stroke of brilliance with others in case you’ve been suffering too.

I  don’t know about your teens, but ours rarely had time to make themselves breakfast or even eat the one prepared for them, let alone contribute in the kitchen, without keeping a ride waiting or missing it altogether, particularly after the sink hole of showering & biological/sociological-mandated prepping which led to forgetting homework or instruments or cleats; so now we’ve flipped the morning:

Downstairs first–packing up, contributing, eating, and then as much time as they want upstairs, Ie. whatever time they’ve left for themselves.

(ps. as parents, try reversing the order for yourself. personal first. communal last.)