Event horizon

Shabbat is over. My husband sits at the dining room table typing away. Already he's hard at work editing a paper due next week. The kids are asleep, and I'm surfing the internet for lack of anything better to do. Well, that's not entirely true. I could be washing more dishes, or being otherwise practical and productive, but it is Saturday night. Although it feels like any other Saturday night, there's one major difference. That paper my husband is working on is his very last assignment for law school, ever. He took his last exam on Thursday. By next Saturday night, it will all be through.

Wow.

Plans for graduation are coming together nicely. My Skokie sister was kind enough to purchase a new home and renovate it over the past few months. She's especially sweet enough to be moving into it next week leaving her old home empty and available for me to borrow. My 90 years old grandmother (hamza, hamza, bli ayin hara'ah, ptui, ptui) doesn't do stairs, so our second story flat won't cut it. So, we'll be furnishing my friend's Skokie split level with borrowed beds, folding tables and chairs, and calling it home for graduation weekend. It will also be party central on Sunday afternoon. I'm planning on decorating the place with balloons and streamers, and preparing a wide array of hors d'oeuvres and my world famous margaritas, and inviting the world to celebrate the end of law school widowhood!!

Speaking of parties, I've planned a birthday party for my angelic terror at the ballet school for mother's day afternoon. My sweetie has turned four, and this is going to be her first real birthday party. She keeps asking me, "is my party tomorrow?" It's rough not having any real concept of time. Big sister's birthday party is going to have to wait for me to get through at least one of the many events on my horizon. She wants a sleepover party, but I think she's still a little young for that. My Cinco de Mayo girl is on the cusp of seven and ready for the Ivy Leagues.

My parents tell me I was an early reader. They love to recount the time I was three and reading the different flavors of Baskin Robbin's ice creams. The kid behind the counter was convinced I'd memorized them all. It didn't amount to much in the long run, so I don't normally get worked up when my kids are ahead of the learning curve, but this kid is the real deal. At the beginning of the year she was struggling with basic readers. By winter break, she was stammering through Ramona the Brave. A month later she devoured the first three books of the Harry Potter series.

This past month her school held a reading contest, challenging the 3rd through 8th graders to read 1600 pages in a month. 1st and 2nd graders could participate if they chose. My little Einstein chewed through Charlotte's Web, Because of Winn-Dixie, Bridge to Terabithia, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and a half dozen other books in a two week period, topping it off with Alice in Wonderland, to take home the top prize: dinner with a teacher. She's six.

Big brother got the top prize, too, but he managed it in three books. Two of them were book 6 and 7 of the Harry Potter series, which already got him three quarters of the way there. I'm surrounded by scholars!

I attribute my kids scholastic success to their father. Seeing him poring over his law books, cliticky-clacking away on his laptop night after night, has clearly made an impression. It's hard for them to moan and whine about having to do homework when they witness their father sweating it out every night. We're going to have to make the most of the week and a half he has before starting to study for the Bar exam. If all I've heard is true, this two day exam is going to make law school look like a picnic.

My dear friend used to say, "buses come in fives." My head is swimming with all of the events we have around the corner. In addition to all of the birthday and graduation celebrations, we've got piano and dance recitals coming up, and if that weren't enough, I'm starting a skating program at my school this week. I will be teaching 150 fourth to seventh graders in-line skating. I haven't been in a pair of skates in over four years, and I wouldn't have considered myself an expert then. It should be amusing. I'm also planning the big field day event at my school with an international theme this year. I've come up with seventeen games from around the globe, now I have to organize the kids and faculty to run it, get all of the necessary equipment together, and pull it all off with panache.

Somehow, it doesn't seem as staggering as it should. For the past three years it felt like life was a great big treadmill. My husband worked and worked and worked with no end in sight. All of a sudden, there are no more exams to outline, no more papers to edit. For once, we're checking items off the to-do list without replacing them with another three. The kids and I only have another six weeks before school is out for summer.

For the first time in three years, I can look down the road to the distance horizon, and see the end of the journey. Or to put it a way my six year old can understand, We're just a couple of paragraphs from the end of the chapter.

Wow.