The Senior Slide

Um, wheeeeeeeeeeeee?

I’m told it’s late April. Which means it’s now spring. Which means, provided inertia doesn’t get tariffed and the world keeps spinning, May will come next.

Which means all the padding of so many protective months buffering me from my daughter’s high school graduation are slipping away.

I knew it would be this way. I knew the big fat luxury I felt in August of a whole school year ahead was counterfeit, a knock off good fooling me into thinking I had something tangible and retainable, something I could bank on.

But one thing I’ve learned is that wondering where Time went does nothing to slow it down. Time doesn’t sit on the side of the road to let you and your friend Emotions catch up. It just jack-rabbits right past you both, pick-pocketing the Present from you as it goes by.

So I try to stay focused on right now. Right now, my daughter still lives in our house, still commutes to school in the city in flip flops, still gets home from school and, at some point before bed, usually right before I am going to bed, details her day to me, the tests she says she’s not ready for, shifting Prom plans, funny things she heard.

Right now, my daughter’s friends still come in and out of our house, stopping by, hanging out or sleeping over. My daughter still goes in to say goodnight to her younger brother and I listen over the monitor, not to the words — they are too whispery — but to the melody of it.

Right now, this is still my song.

But right now, I can’t stop thinking about disappearing birdsong, what happens when some outer force — like changing migratory patterns — makes a once cacophonous place go quiet.

Just now, I Google the consequences of disappearing birdsong: loss of biodiversity, ecosystem disruption, loss of natural soundscapes and impact on human well-being.

Now that sounds exactly like what happens when a kid leaves for college.

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Everyone talks so much about the senior slide and, yes, I’d agree it’s a real thing. My daughter and friends seem to have lost the difference between weeknights and weekend nights. They study all together while a movie plays. They go to the beach and out to dinner, and it could be Saturday but it might also be Tuesday.

They are spending as much time as possible together because while there will be plenty to learn and study in the years ahead, this is the part they won’t get back.

Which is why I’ve always thought of a senior slide less as an academic slacking off and more as the kind of slide you’d find at a playground.

Specifically, a tunnel slide. I picture the super tall one our kids used to love at a park we called Castle Park. That wasn’t the park’s name; that’s just what we called it. The slide wasn’t actually super tall; it just seemed that way back then.

From the ground, that giant purple slide looked long and generous. Kids had to climb stairs and stairs and stairs to get to the top platform. Surely the ride would take some time. Surely for so much uphill there would be a commensurate downhill. Surely everyone was meant to enjoy this slide.

At the top, your kid would duck in and disappear from view. I think a crazed and worrying sort might think her child could fall from the fully enclosed perch above, or get stuck in the middle or, even worse, somehow get kidnapped from the cylinder, but I’m only guessing.

While your kid slid down inside — wheeeeeeeee! — you’d wait at the bottom to see them again. And after a fast and dark trip — much of which you’d only hear about later because more and more you’d start to understand that this was not your ride to have — your kid would pop out, staticky-haired and disoriented, into the light.

And then you’d go home. And put them down for hundreds of naps. And feed them thousands of meals. And drive them tens of thousands of miles. And throw a bunch of birthday parties and host a bunch of playdates and sit on countless sidelines.

And worry. And be relieved. And worry again.

And laugh. And cry. And laugh again.

And yell at them some, but hug them more.

And I know what you’re thinking — that all sounds like it would take forever.

But it doesn’t.

It takes 10 minutes tops.

And then they leave.

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“I want to get you listening to happier music before I leave.” My daughter tells me this last Sunday night. It is late and I’d been just about to go upstairs to bed. But she comes into the family room and sits on the ottoman so now we are having a little visit and I no longer care how late it is because I can sleep next year.

She picks up my phone and starts scrolling through my music.

“Mom, your running playlist would be a crying playlist for me.”

She’s said this before. And I know it’s true, but if I like a song, I’ll run to it. It doesn’t need to be uptempo. If I find a melodic and lyrical dirge, I’ll add it.

She keeps looking but it doesn’t take long because my catalogue is limited.

“I’m surprised you of all people don’t have more playlists.” At this she tours me through her Spotify and all her many, many playlists, for all different moods and settings and occasions.

I tell her I don’t do this. I just add any song I fall in love with to an ever-growing list, and like rings of a tree, I can look at any point in the list and mark my age and headspace at the time. Desperate songs the narrow rings of the cold, dry years of my youngest’s early epilepsy. Bouncier ones the wider rings of the favorable climate conditions of his better health. Melancholy ones marking the droughts of 2020 and 2023 when my two older kids left for college.

But, I tell her: I used to make mixes all the time. Back when it was hard, back when a double cassette player seemed the very pinnacle of modern media, I made mixes like it was my job. I curated and sourced. I considered flow and segues. I hand wrote the song titles and the artists, and I pulled lines from songs for extra dramatic effect such that the recipient would really understand what I was trying to say with this collection of music. And I drew little designs on the cover while I grappled with the title because whatever words ran down that skinny little spine would set the whole tone. It was very high stakes and incredibly important work. And I did it over and over again.

“Well, yeah, you can still do all of that on Spotify. You can even choose a cover from your photos.” She shows me all the colorful thumbnails on her screen, and I’ll admit it is a little dopamine dose as it’s exactly the sort of thing my eyes like to land on.

Still, this is different. Both the process and the product. But I don’t point it out because I’ve noticed my kids regard relic-ish stories the way I regarded black and white tv shows when I was little: this can’t possibly be good without the modernity of color.

So I keep my color to myself.

“Wait — what is that song I always want to know the name of? I think it has moon in the title?”

I’m barely done telling her before Blue Moon is playing on her phone. A few beats of the drum and a few strums of what I think is a charango, and she breaks into a smile, as if she’s just spotted someone she loves in a crowd.

“Yes. This is the one. You played this so much. I feel like I’m back in the old Audi.” She sways as Beck sings Oh don’t leave me on my own. I let the line go and fade, but if I was making her a mixtape, I’d probably put it on the cover.

“I wish I could revive that little green shuffle you had when I was little,” she says between hums. But of course that tiny device met its obsolescence years ago. Now my daughter’s trying to recreate it, making a playlist of songs that remind her of me and my husband. She’s looking for the soundtrack of her childhood, the sounds she can pack and bring with her to college. She’s seen two siblings leave home. She knows these might be some of the most important things she takes.

She remembers another song to add: 93 Million Miles, a family belting favorite when the kids were younger, and a song I credit for the only two galaxy facts I know — distance to the sun is in the title; distance to the moon in the second verse. It always struck me as an older kid song, a song of someone who’s left their childhood home and parents, but carries the lessons of both with them. During the years we scream-sang this in the car, I didn’t believe that kids leaving home was the sort of thing that could befall me.

Those little voices so immediate, relentless and mine.

My daughter and I sing along as she adds and adds, quilting all these notes and memories together. Making something warm for the east coast fall.

Just know-ow-ow,

wherever you go,

you can always come home.

I let the line go and fade.

Because she already knows.

Jen.

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Something about Everything❤️

My husband’s dad died last week. Boppa, as we all called him. He is so much more than a footnote. His life could launch a thousand substacks! And so many beautiful and true things are being said about him in conversations in person and on phones and in emails and in texts far and wide.

This won’t be enough, but I want to add a few notes to the collective.

I wrote about Boppa this past fall when we thought things were dire, but true to form, he rebounded and lived many more months, celebrating holidays, another birthday, spending quality time with friends and family, even making a trip to Hawaii.

This wasn’t surprising because Boppa knew exactly how to live. He was excellent at it. He knew how to wring every drop out of a day.

He lived his life focused on what could be bountiful — positivity, resilience, curiosity, family, friends, ideas, conversation, hobbies. Also one liners — he was the speaker of some of my all time favorites. I keep them like treasures.

I think the happiest people I’ve ever met share one thing in common: they are prone to delight. My youngest is exceptional at this — he lets the world wow him at every turn. I used to think this was a by product of his neurodiversity. But as I’ve thought about Boppa this past week, I realize this trait was simply handed down.

As so many were. I’m lucky to know and love nine people who have so much Boppa in them. Through lines of warmth and smarts and sparkle. A many-legged legacy that will walk on and on.

I’m lucky to have seen a marriage of deep love and equally deep companionship. Two people who for nearly 59 years were unrelentingly happy to see the other walk into a room.

I’m lucky that my husband had this dad. I’m lucky that my kids had this grandfather.

As my youngest said when we told him this very sad news, “But he was everything when he was here.”

He was.

To bounty. And delight. And really living.

To Boppa.

❤️

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