Halfway there

Brian Wilson

Like a thief in the night, the midpoint of the school year slipped by last week.

With the exception of those students whose grades and academic eligibility rests on the knife’s edge of how they did on their semester finals, it was a generally unremarkable milestone. For the vast majority of people, both in our local communities and in the wider world, the transition from the first semester to the second semester of high school is a meaningless blip. A casual reader could begin to wonder why I have devoted the last 94 words fixating on it.

The other day I got an email from Medford Area Public Schools asking me to confirm the spelling of Alex’s name and how me and my wife wanted it to appear on his diploma.

It is a weird email to get in January and one that wakes you up to the realization that time is, indeed, moving faster than you realize. The point was hit home even more when I realized that there is only one more home curling match for the high school season, after which that chapter will close.

My son is a senior this year, and I am still gradually adjusting to the idea that after having children in school for the better part of two decades, it will all be over sooner than I am prepared to admit.

Last weekend, my family headed down to Chicago to see the play “Hamilton.” The trip had been a delayed family Christmas present and it was amazing — even if I had to slide my glasses down to the end of my nose in order to have the actors’ faces in focus as we were looking down on them from the balcony seats. Like most things, bifocals are great, until they aren’t.

We drove down early last Saturday morning, spent the day sight-seeing in downtown Chicago, had dinner at a fancy restaurant (where my 23-year-old daughter ordered macaroni and cheese) and went to the show. We stayed the night in Chicago and did some touristy stuff on Sunday including visiting the American Writer’s Museum before heading home.

At one point on Saturday afternoon my wife and I split up from Alex and Beth who wanted to check out an ice cream museum. As I watched them walk together down the street, I was reminded of when Beth was in 6th grade and Alex was in Kindergarten and of them walking from my wife’s shop on Main Street down State Street to go to Holy Rosary School.

As a parent, it is one of those small things that throws you for a sucker punch to the gut and a reminder that every moment is just that, a moment. Moments come and they go with the blink of an eye or the shifting of a shadow and then they are gone.

Sometimes I wish I could lock those memories up and relive the times in more than my mind. That would ultimately be pointless. While our memories are part of who we are and help shape our view of the world around us, the future lies ahead of us.

While we were in Chicago, we walked over to Millennium Park to see The Bean statue through a fence and construction. As could be expected on Saturday in January, the park had many tourists and other visitors. As we walked up the steps cut into a small hill, I saw a father with his young son, who appeared to be about four or five years old. They had a sled and the father would carry the sled to the top of the hill and then wait for his son to ride it down before repeating it again and again. They showed no sign of stopping when we passed them leaving the park. I am sure that afternoon of sliding down something that would barely qualify as a hill is a memory that both the father and son will keep for years to come and will give them a much-needed smile in the darker times.

Perhaps that is all we can ask. To be lucky enough to make those memories and treasure them as we move on with our lives.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.