Back to school night

Tonight was a first for me as I was able to attend my first back to school night, I think ever. Parents are finally allowed back on campus, so it was a joyous reunion of moms and dads I mostly hadn’t seen since fall of 2019. Sometimes I feel like the damage done by the loss of that year of school will never be undone - all the missed opportunities to socialize and get to know these people; Bobby has one foot out of this school, which, sadly, means I do as well, as I feel myself already separating myself emotionally from the place in anticipation of the day it won’t be part of our lives anymore. The majority of people there now are strangers to me, since both my kids are older. I hope we can have the Halloween festival and Christmas pageant again like normal times…it’s things like that that connect you to a place. 

For today, though, I got to see the rooms my kids spend most of their time in, meet their teachers, and look at the walls and out the windows my kids will look at (hopefully) until next June, when things will be so different. It’s interesting - delightful, really - to see how much kids’ emotional well being is addressed  at school these days; I was trying to picture what a back to school night might have been like in the early 80s when I was their age. I can’t imagine any thought whatsoever was given to our mental health. I’m often shocked by the levels of trauma people my age endured just by existing forty or fifty years ago; it’s no wonder everyone is anxious and depressed.

Bobby is pretty much what I would have been minus trauma; there’s no doubt he’s a sensitive, cautious child prone to getting scared or grossed out easily, all traits he no doubt genetically got from me. But there’s a different element there when you take a kid that has those genetic markers but put him in a loving stable home. We’ll see what happens in his adolescence - that’s where it all fell apart for me - but so far he seems like a happy, well-adjusted kid. And Theo doesn’t have my personality at all, so, you know, good for him-!

My event looms a week away and I am slowly plugging away at all the last minute projects. Everything will get done. But I’m so sick of it all already - I’m very much looking forward to it all being over. I’m sick of the round-the-clock customer service, the snarky social media bullshit, the now daily experience of discovering something I paid for in 2019 is now double or triple the cost, because, you know, gas prices. Unfortunately I have not experienced a last minute bump in attendance. We close on Tuesday, and right now I’m getting maybe one or two people signing up vs five to ten canceling and wanting their money back each day. I’ve never had a final week like this, ever. Normally I can guarantee about 200 people in the last week. This year I’ll be lucky to get 20. It sucks. So, I’m operating at about 2007 numbers, just over half my normal attendance. Sigh. With over 250 people in free, it’ll still look full. But I’ll know the money is not what I need it to be. I think between costs, anti vaxxers unable to attend, and people still scared of covid, I got hammered this year. My only hope is that by next year, my big 25th anniversary, that I’ll be able to rebuild a bit back to what I had in 2019. In the meantime at least I raised my prices to take some of the sting out of the reduced attendance. It’s still probably the biggest dance event this year, so it’s all relative. 

For now I get up frikken early again tomorrow, get the kids to school, get groceries, do laundry, and work work work. I can’t wait for that moment that we’re in the cabin again next month. Watching our shipping container on our security cameras is the only thing that gives me any peace right now.