The Great Flood...of Worry

I forgot the book yesterday but overall, we held it together pretty well.

I worry about the next several weeks.  With each passing day, the pressure for Sean keeping himself together becomes more and more intense.

From Spring Break to the end of the school year there are eleven, almost uninterrupted, weeks.  A day off for Good Friday and one for Memorial Day.  Other than those, Sean's in for a long haul.

He's grumpier in the morning.  Tired.  Complaining.  Today it was about his comforter being more dense than the one (actually I have two) on my bed.  He says he overheats and then can't sleep well.  If he wouldn't burrow down under the blanket and then not only cover his head but tuck in everything like a turtle shell, I'm sure he would have a more contented slumber.

I tell him this.  But I'm only the mom.  What do I know?

I do know that I worry about him most during this time of year.  He's doing wonderfully in school.  The transition is going better than expected.  He's been thrown a million curve balls - a long-term substitute for a hand-picked teacher, a schedule mix-up, another schedule mix-up, difficulties on the bus....and then add in braces in January and my new, longer, working hours.

It's been a ton of changes and yet, the kid has sailed through.

But now is that time of year.... where he's tired of keeping everything in check and processing so much so quickly.  He's exhausted.

I worry about him because he's broken down in the past during this time. 

This next part is really difficult to talk about but it's reality - you all know it is....  It's when your child has a meltdown at school and has to be restrained.

I know.... it's horrible.  To imagine that happening....  It shreds your heart.

But it happens.

When Sean was younger our goal was simply to get through the day.  Not that it happened that often - it didn't.  But you always worried it would....

And it always happened during that time between Spring Break and the end of the year.

One year he almost made it.  It was three days before the end of the school year.  3 days!!!!  He was so disappointed.  He had tried so hard.

The next year he made it through.  And the next.  And the next.

I don't know when I will stop worrying about Sean having a Defcon 1 meltdown.  I certainly won't stop now - not at this time of the year.

So as I calculate the number of lunches I have left to make, the number of granola bars that I have yet to purchase, I also count the number of days to freedom.

For Sean, it is the freedom from noise and people streaming past him....of immeasurable expectations from all the new people in his life.

For me, it is the freedom from that crushing worry that I have as I drop him off at school every morning.

40 days...and counting.