I Am Not A Chimpanzee. And You, Ma'am, Are No Jane Goodall

Imagine, for a moment, that your husband has just told you he's leaving. He's in love with another woman, and he's leaving you.

Now, imagine that he says, "But before I go, I'd like my girlfriend to come over here and observe you going about your day. So she knows what to do when she takes over."

This was one of the many scenarios that I imagined the other day. The day that the woman who is getting my job came to "observe" me, so she knows what to do when she takes over in September.

When my boss, the lead teacher, told me about this plan, I kind of giggled. I thought it was funny. "How odd!" I thought. I tried to remember which woman it was who observed chimpanzees. I get the chimp one and the gorilla one mixed up, okay? Jane. Jane Goodall was the chimps, Dian Fossey had the gorillas. So I started calling my replacement "Jane Goodall" in my head because I am more chimp-like than gorilla like. I have small shoulders.

So I imagined Jane Goodall coming to our classroom, and hunkering down behind one of the little shelves...furiously scribbling in a small notebook as she took note of my fascinating workday. In my imagination, she also wore a pith helmet.

"This morning, I observed the subject feeding breakfast to approximately 15 young. She displayed great patience while they cried out her name repeatedly and asked for more pears."

"At 9:00 a.m., the subject suddenly left the room. I was able to follow her trail and found her relieving herself. NOTE: after this mid-morning elimination, the subject was much more relaxed."

"After she had successfully gotten approximately 20 young to sleep for 'nap time', I noted the subject peering into the screen of a laptop. I approached the subject carefully, not wanting to disturb her. I noted that she was looking up 'FOOT PAIN' on a website called 'WebMd'. NOTE: Subject was wearing flip flops and a crude pedicure."

"The subject was wary around me. At times she showed her teeth and I was unsure if this was an attempt to be friendly or a warning."

A few things crossed my mind that day. One of them was, OMG. Could this be any more awkward or humiliating? I mean, it's bad enough to get laid off. But then, they expect me to be all shits and giggles while the person who is taking my job comes to watch me do it?

I know, I know. IT'S NOT HER FAULT. Her only crime is having more years under her belt than me. But dammit. It was really hard to be kind. Especially when she kept asking me the same question, over and over, in a very hard to understand, very heavy accent:

"What are you doing?"

She must have asked me this question a hundred times. The first forty times or so, I answered her. I had to explain to her, very slowly, what I was doing, why I was doing it. There was a slight communication issue. Aside from giving her a blow-by-blow account of my every move, I also had to do my actual job. The kids didn't turn it down a notch because Jane Goodall was in the room observing their Miss Jenny. They went about their day, being kids. Loud, active, brash and bold and did I mention loud?

My kindness waned.

Again, I reminded myself, IT'S NOT HER FAULT. But you know what? I'm human. And while she stood there, staring at me, writing things down, and asking me over and over,

"What are you doing?"

I felt an ugly wave of emotions rolling over me. I was mad. I was sad. I found it absolutely repugnant that someone thought this was a good idea. I started to think about how much I like my job and how much fun I have and how this past year has been so freaking good. So good for me, for my kids. I thought about the job search and how hard it is and what it's like to be middle-aged and scared and how sick and tired I am of being middle-aged and scared. And then I thought:

"Fuck this." (sorry) (actually, not sorry. This was a fucked up situation, folks. F-bomb entirely called for.)

I stopped answering her and I did my job. I decided if the powers-that-be wanted her to learn the ropes, they could give me a paid day off and have Jane MotherEffing Goodall come in and do it.

She wanted to observe me? Fine. I felt zero obligation to stop what I was doing and tell her "NOW I AM ORGANIZING THE CHILDREN'S JOURNALS" or "NOW I AM CUTTING THESE STRIPS TO MAKE LITTLE GRADUATION CAPS FOR THE CHILDREN" or "THAT CHILD WAS UPSET SO I WAS COMFORTING HER".

She asked me, one more time:

"What are you doing?"

I looked at her, looked at this Jane Goodall person, this person I was having trouble understanding. This person I was having trouble liking.

I looked into her eyes and I said,

"I'm doing my job."

Jane Goodall's visit happened earlier this week, and it affected me more than I thought. Today I lost it at work. No worries, the kids were napping. But I straight up lost it, crying and dabbing my eyes with paper towels in the lead teacher's tiny office. I told her how shitty this was, how freaking scared I was. How it felt like I was getting dumped by my husband all over again, and having Jane G. there to watch me was so wrong. I told her I'm scared that I won't find a good-enough job, and I won't be able to stay in this house and how I don't want my kids to ever have to move again, ever have to pack up their stuff and leave. How I'm terrified that we'll have to move somewhere small and cheap and give Walter away and how Molly will have to leave college and she'll hate me.

Oh, and the handle on my car broke. The one on the driver's side. So while I try and figure out how to get that mother effer fixed, I'm going to have to either leave the window down all the time or else swing into my car like freaking Bo and Luke Duke.

It's all going to be okay. I'm just going to keep telling myself that. Everything always works out okay.



"Subject has calmed down since her last episode. During my observations, I noted that she has big feelings and cannot hide them, no matter how hard she tries. Her obvious contempt for me was overshadowed only by the guilt she exhibited for having such contemptuous feelings. She approached me, at the end of my observation period, and reached out. I was afraid, at first, until the subject spoke: "I'm sorry if I was rude to you." she said, slowly. "This is hard for me. I'm not a mean person. I hope you like working here."  

My Side of the Bed

Ahhh...the advice you get when going through a divorce. It's plentiful. Some of it's useful.

"Start dating, NOW. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to find another husband!"
"Say goodbye to your in-laws. Even the ones you thought were friends. Blood is thicker than water."
"If you don't already have one, get a vibrator. NOW."
"Go through all of your pictures and get rid of every single one of him! No reminders!"

If you know me even a little bit, you can guess which pieces of the above advice I took to heart. I'll give you a clue: only one of them. A couple more clues? I love my in-laws, to this day. I have pictures of my ex...not on the walls, but in books and in boxes. Because he's the father of my children and they will want them. And we all know how it's going for me on the dating front, 7 1/2 years later.

But there was one nugget of wisdom that surprised me. It made me think, and to this day it still whizzes through my mind almost every time I reach over and smack the snooze button on my alarm clock at 4:45 a.m.

"Start sleeping in the middle of the bed." 

It was handed to me during a long phone conversation with another mom at my kid's school. We weren't particularly close then, or now, but for some reason she reached out and wanted to talk. We chatted about marriage and affairs and fractured families and our children. We giggled about dating and sex, and about being tired mothers. And then she asked:

"Which side of the bed was yours?"

I remember the irony of that moment, as I had been clutching my cordless phone while perched on the end of said bed. I had looked up, and over at the head of the bed, at the four pillows neatly arranged there. Two on the left, two on the right. The lone nightstand was as it had always been, before and during the marriage. On the right.

Back in the Time Before Lawyers, my husband had the right side. He was the one who had to be up and out of the house, before my day as a stay-at-home-mom began. Our tiny master bedroom, in the old house we used to live in, barely had room for the queen bed and the tipsy nightstand and a big dresser. There was a long closet, with sliding wooden doors that became swollen and nearly impossible to move in the summer humidity. The alarm would go off, he'd silence it and then I remember, he'd sit on the side of the bed for a few moments. The right side of the bed, nearest the closet.

In the dark, I'd sometimes reach out and touch his back, a wordless good morning. Sometimes there would be a child between us...sometimes more than one. As the end of our marriage neared, I stopped reaching out, and instead would pull the covers tighter over me and turn to face to cool wall on the left side of the bed. A different kind of wordless good morning.

When he first left, I had trouble sleeping. I was scared and certain that at any given moment during the night, bands of thieves, sexual predators and serial killers were convening outside, playing rock-paper-scissors to see who'd get first dibs on the single woman and her babies. I spent most nights on the couch, with an aluminum baseball bat.

On those nights when I did use the bed, I was rarely alone. Although my children will vehemently deny it, for a while we had a family bed. The five of us would become a human Tetris game, fitting seamlessly together as we dreamed the dreams of a family in flux. The left side was still my territory though, even if it meant traversing a small mountain of long, bony arms and legs and soft, sweet smelling heads to smack the snooze button.

I tried sleeping in the middle, tried taking my friend's advice. And every single morning I'd wake to find that during the night there was a migration to the left. I often say that I enjoy living on the edge; apparently I like to sleep there, too.

Time has passed, and the unfamiliar has become the norm. Oh, a kid will still sneak in now and then, sometimes just to talk, sometimes falling asleep like they did when they were little. Most nights I butt up against Walter, my dog. He snores, and when he dreams of chasing squirrels and bunnies, his paws twitch. I don't mind it at all.

On rare occasions, someone else will join me. Note the word "rare". Some of these bedfellows (I love when a word can be used super literally) you know by their monikers, some will never be written about. A girl has to play a few cards close to the vest, you know.

But for the most part, my bed is mine. The sheets are cool and clean and soft, and the four pillows are almost always arranged neatly at the head of the bed. Two on the left, two on the right. The master bedroom in this house is large, there is plenty of room for the queen bed, a nightstand and a big dresser.

Only now, the nightstand is on the left. My side of the bed.

Video: "Voice of the Child of Divorce" Now With 100% More Guilt!

Several people have shared this video with me over the past couple of days. I didn't watch it for a few reasons...mainly because I thought it would make me sad. One morning, however, I decided to give it a go. The friend who shared it with me (a wonderful and loving person, by the way, this post is not meant to disparage her) warned me to "grab a box of tissues" before watching it.

Turns out, I didn't need tissues. Go ahead, watch it now:

Am I the only one who thinks he looks a little like the youngest kid on Weeds? Shane Botwin? Amirite?

Okay. No way a child wrote that. Nope. Not unless there's a Doogie Howser of Divorced Kids out there. This was a script written by an adult with an agenda. Read by a kid in order to tweak emotions and to drive the point home. And that point?

Divorce is bad. If you get a divorce, your children are screwed. Children of divorce are doomed. Selfish people who get divorces are ruining their children's lives. And so on, and so forth. Got it?

A little bit of research led me to the maker of the video, Monica Epperson. Epperson is the co-founder of a non-profit called The Child of Divorce. The mission of this non-profit is "to give children of divorce a voice- and age is irrelevant". A little bit more research led me to discover that Epperson is, not surprisingly, a child of divorce herself. Her parents divorced before she was one, and her mother remarried, and divorced, 4 more times before she was 12.

She experienced 5 divorces. In an interview she spoke about the revolving door of men, of step-fathers in her life, and how she learned from a way, way too early age that eventually, everybody leaves. My heart goes out to her, however, I think I see where the agenda comes from.

Listen, I'm not going to argue with anyone about how bad divorce is for kids. Having gone through it as a kid, and watching my four children deal with it for the past several years, I know firsthand how crappy it is. No matter how great the ex-spouses get along, no matter how evenly divided the parenting times are, no matter how well-cared for the children are, it's going to suck.

And God help all of you if it's a messy divorce. Because "suck" doesn't even begin to describe that.

However, this video does nothing to help anyone. It's shaming those of us who have had to make the tough choice to divorce and it's giving fodder to those who think parents who divorce are selfish, awful people who don't give a shit about their kids.

Are there people like that? People who put themselves, their wants and needs before those of their children? Of course there are. Every divorce is different, but they all end the same: a once intact family is broken. Does that mean, as this video says, that parents who divorce are telling their children that "it is better to be right that to be loved?" Or that parents who divorce are "robbing their kids of their childhoods"? Or that when a parent decides there is no other option left but divorce, they are "not thinking of their children's futures"?

No, no, no. A thousand times no. Making the choice to pursue a divorce is not made lightly. You don't wake up one morning and say to yourself, "Gee...I have this extra $20,000 here and some spare afternoons. Say, why don't I get divorced!". There are always going to be those who do it and convince themselves that the children will bounce back, unscathed and absolutely tickled pink about having two houses and two Christmases and two Playstations. But the majority of parents who divorce do so with great trepidation and oh, oh...oh so much guilt.

In my case, I had no choice. My husband had moved out and into a home with his girlfriend. He refused to begin the proceedings, seemingly content to remain married on paper but apart in life. Calling a divorce attorney was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

But I had no other options.

Was I doing it to prove how right I was? Did I do it to rob my children of their childhoods? Did I sign the papers with nary a thought regarding my children's futures?

No. I did it in order to move on with my life. In order to keep life moving forward for myself, and more importantly, for my kids. I thought of my children's futures, and little else.

Most people in the throes of divorce are going to make some mistakes. Some big ones, some little ones. But mark my word, for people like me, people who fought for their marriages tooth and nail, who dragged their feet into that attorney's office...each mistake is like a tiny dagger in the heart. Things between the ex and I are quiet and civil now, but back when feelings were raw, self-doubt was rampant: "Did I just seal my daughter's fate as a spinster with daddy issues?" I'd ask myself if I slipped and said something derogatory about my ex. "Did one of my boys just become a misogynistic narcissist?" was the question du jour when it was revealed that their father had come up with a new, not-so-nice nickname for me at his house.

And what of those people who know, without a doubt, that their children would actually benefit from a divorce? What about the woman who is married to an abuser? Or the man struggling to keep his family together despite his wife's chronic substance abuse?

What about the couple who have tried, valiantly, to work on their marriage but both know it's not going to help? Are the children in these scenarios going to benefit from staying in a stressful, unhappy environment?

Or by making this choice, are these parents doing what Doogie says in the video: "At times you are risking my safety to fill a void in your heart."?

Thing is, those of us who worry about this kind of damage don't need anyone handing us more guilt. To quote Eddie Murphy in Trading Places, "There's plenty, you know."

And those parents who do go through the divorce process without considering their children's psyches and futures? They aren't watching videos like this. They aren't reading books about it, or consulting experts or even sitting at red lights, wondering, "Hey. My actions and choices may be harming my kids...should I check in with them and see if they're okay?"

This message is lost on them.

Like I said before, divorce isn't a fun thing. People don't torture themselves trying to decide if it's "divorce or DisneyWorld this year? Which one would the kids enjoy more?". But it is not the end of the world.

For some of us, it's the beginning of a new one. And pointing fingers isn't going to help us...or our kids.



INTERESTING TIDBIT: I was writing this on the porch, and my eldest child (20 years old) walked in. We were chatting a bit and I decided to bounce this post off him...you know, to get another "child of divorce" opinion.

He agreed with many points in the video, adding that as a child he would have preferred knowing nothing about the proceedings while the divorce was going down. He mentioned how awful it was having to go to school and listen while other kids talked about their moms and dads and families, while his world was being shaken up. Which gave me a lot to think about. And of course, some more guilt.

Sigh.

My Mother's Day Getaway Tale: Time Off, Ticks and Tattoo

I don't think most moms get enough time off. Oh, sure, we get quiet time here and there, sometimes we get babysitters and sometimes our kids are old enough so we can lock our bedroom doors and binge watch episodes of Louie while clenching the body pillow just a little too hard (what? only me?).

But actual time off, like the kind where you go to sleep at least two nights in a row somewhere that is far away from your kids? That's hard to come by. For those of you who have wee little ones and are recoiling in horror and thinking "I would never want to be apart from my baby! What is wrong with you? DON'T YOU LOVE YOUR CHILDREN??", please print this out and read it in ten years. Or after you have the kind of day that ends with you curled up on the bathroom floor, trying to muffle your sobs and also shove a sleeve of Thin Mints in your mouth while your kids gather at the closed door like an irate mob of torch-wielding villagers descending upon Frankenstein's castle. Whichever of these happens first.

I know for a fact that I don't get enough time off. The last time I took a really substantial chunk of time away from mothering was in 2012, when I went to Amsterdam with John McCain. The guilt was killer but folks, it was so good for me. And for my kids. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, you know.

And don't worry: kids aren't like cats. They won't take a dump on your pillow or in your shoe just to show you how much they don't appreciate you leaving them. They are almost always really happy to see you when you return. And so is the person who's been watching them. So there's happiness all around when Mommy crosses the threshold of home sweet home...it's like your kids have turned into Herve Villechaize and Ricardo Montalban. In fact, this video shows you what it's like right before you walk in the front door:

(now I want to watch Fantasy Island. Especially this episode featuring Lisa Hartman and Dack Rambo.)


Three of my friends and I ran away from home for a few days last weekend. Yes, I'm THAT MOM. I wanted to be far away from my family on Mother's Day weekend. Judge away, haters. It was fabulous. We left for my friend Michelle's Wisconsin lake cabin on Thursday night and came back about 8 pounds heavier and a whole lot happier on Sunday afternoon. I was also covered with ticks but we'll get to that later.

So technically, I did spend most of the actual Day of Mothers with my kids, and of course with my own Mom. But the days leading up to it were spent in blissful peace, drinking dirty martinis, eating delicious meals and watching old movies like "Working Girl" (I have a head for business and bod for sin...oh how I love that movie). Also maybe sending out embarrassing tipsy texts, but what happens at the cabin usually stays at the cabin.

My companions for the long weekend were The Evil Twins (Michelle and her identical twin Janelle) and our friend Andrea. Michelle and Andrea were the cooks, while Janelle and I handled eating and keeping the couch cushions warm.

On Saturday, Michelle and Andrea encouraged me to move take a walk with them. I was starting to worry about bed sores at this point, so I decided to go. We usually walk along the dirt roads that lead everywhere and nowhere in Wisconsin, but this time we lived on the edge and chose to take a hike. Through the wild woods. And I'll be honest here, it wasn't Michelle's or my brilliant idea to tromp through the woods: it was Andrea's. More honesty? I thought she was the smartest out of the three of us. She's an attorney, for God's sake! But noooooo....

There we were. No cell phones, no water and apparently no brains. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but there are three things in this world that scare me: a prolapsed uterus, clowns...and BEARS. I'm so afraid of bears. I have nightmares about them. All I could think about as we noisily trekked through the trees was: "Are either of them menstruating? Because if all this noise we're making doesn't attract all of the bears, the scent of blood will for sure."

Yes, the bears weighed heavily on my mind until Michelle screamed. She was leading our Three Stooges Tour of Wisconsin, and when I heard her shriek I thought for sure she'd stepped in a pile of fresh bear scat. Or maybe on the actual bear who was scatting.

Oh no. Nope. Michelle was standing there, resplendent in her uniform of black yoga pants, black yoga jacket and running shoes, and she was staring down at her legs.

HER LEGS WERE COVERED IN TICKS. Like, crawling with them. Big ones, tiny ones, red ones, black ones.

Did you know that May is the big month for ticks? It's like their Spring Break and Wisconsin is Mazatlan. I didn't know this factoid until Michelle mentioned it while she screamed and brushed away ticks in the middle of the woods. At this point both Andrea and I began inspecting each other like besotted chimpanzees. I found two big ones on the back of her legs, another three on her arms and a few more on the back of her shirt. She found only one on me, but by God I knew there were more. I could feel them everywhere.

This seemed like a good time for Michelle to inform us that she felt like we were lost. I asked them if they had their periods. Nobody answered me and we began walking again, this time brushing our arms and legs like we were a traveling interpretive dance troupe performing "Tick Season In Wisconsin".

After what felt like days (but was really about an hour), we arrived back at the cabin. We undressed at the front door and again checked each other (which really is kind of a bonding experience, now that I've had time to reflect upon it). More and more ticks. Ticks as far as the eye could see! I found a few on my head and several in the hood of my sweatshirt. Michelle announced, "They like to be in places on your body where it's warm and dark and covered in tight clothing."

Well isn't that special. Apparently from the neck down I am considered to be the tick version of Old Country Buffet. "GRAB A TRAY, ASSHOLES. IT'S CHOW TIME!".

We recovered nicely with a few glasses of sangria and after that I hardly felt the ticks crawling on me and attaching themselves to all the dark warm places. Then we watched a few hours of HGTV (Flip or Flop...that show is like crack. Damn you, Tarek and Christina). Before we knew it, it was time for dinner and martinis and by that time all thoughts of ticks were gone for the night. At one point I did say, "You guys! I think I feel a tick on my liver. Wait...never mind. It's just cirrhosis." I switched to mineral water after that.

We had about 60 hours of relaxing, kid-free, responsibility-free time. It was awesome...ticks and all.

The house was standing upon my return, each member of my little family was present and accounted for. Everyone made it to work, the dog was fed and loved, and as far as I know, nothing illegal, immoral or illicit happened while I was gone.

The children were sweet to me that day, Mother's Day. They presented me with gifts wrapped in plastic bags from the gas station down the street: bags of Twizzlers (one bag of strawberry twists, one bag of cherry Pull N' Peel...because nothing says "Thanks Mom" like Type 2 diabetes) (But for real, dem babies know mama so well). It was perfect. Mother's Day isn't that big of a deal to me. I'd rather have several pretty good days spread throughout the year over one day of forced niceties. My kids honor me by being good, kind people. And that's really all I want.

That, and a little time off once in a while.

Closing Time: Saying Goodbye To My Daughter's Childhood

Closing Time.

Despite the fact that it's been played billions of times and on countless shows and movies (remember when it was on Friends?), it remains one of my favorite songs, sung by one of my favorite singers. Dan Wilson wrote the words and they have been bouncing around inside my head for fifteen years...they've "fit" a few situations but perhaps never as achingly well as they do right now:

Closing time, open all the doors,

 And let you out into the world,

 Closing time, turn all of the lights on,

 Over every boy and every girl.

My daughter, Molly, has less than a month left before she's done with high school. I'm just beginning to feel the pangs of graduation party psychosis (warning: don't go to Pinterest for grad party ideas unless you are comfortable being in the fetal position for several hours at a time). We've ordered her yearbook, paid her senior fees.

She was accepted into the college she really wanted to attend (she only applied to two, so, phew). The housing deposit has been sent and cashed, financial aid forms filled out and the mental list of "stuff she'll need for the dorm room" is already taking up way too much real estate in my crowded brain.

On a recent Saturday night, she and I hung out together. We were at home, along with two of the boys, which in and of itself is a rarity. That weird stage of life has begun, the one where I often find myself with a quiet house, all my babies scattered hither and yon with their friends. So to have not one, but three of the chicks safely ensconced in the nest was a warm and sweet surprise.

Sweeter, though, and more surprising, was where Molly ended up that night. Not holed up in her room, listening to music or reading or texting her friends, but out in the living room. On the couch. Next to me.

"I'm freezing. Are you cold?" I asked her.
"Kind of. Should I go get my pink blanket?" she replied.

The pink blanket was a favorite Target clearance purchase from several years back. From the esteemed "Shabby Chic" collection, it's like a giant grown up version of a child's security blanket: heavy, pillowy-soft, with satin edging. She brought it out from her room, and proceeded to lay down next to me...practically on top of me, pulling the blanket over both of us. We lay there like that for quite a while, me not saying a word lest I break the spell, that magical moment where it wasn't teen vs mom or daughter tolerating mother: it was me and my girl, cuddling together. Like we used to when she was little and things like college and dorms and FAFSA forms were foreign and so far away.

She isn't my first child to step out of one world, the world of high school, and into a new one. Her older brother, Charlie, made the leap two years ago. And yes, I did just as much looking back with watery eyes then as I'm doing now. But like Charlie is wont to do, he did it in his own special way. He chose to approach college in a different manner, and is knocking out all of the humdrum prerequisites at the community college downtown. He lives here at home, does his homework and is diligently racking up credits. He'll transfer to the big state university here in Minneapolis next year, without any debt and with almost half of the credits he'll need for his degree. He's a smart one, that kid.

But he didn't leave. I think that's the biggie here, the thing that stings. The thing that fills me with so much excitement and at the same time, with so much wistfulness. I still see Charlie every day. Hear his voice, make him meals, nag him about leaving his giant shoes everywhere.

Molly, though....she's leaving. I've seen her pretty much every day of her life. Watched her grow from a fuzzy headed baby to a strong-willed toddler to a shy kindergartner to a tall, funny and self-confident young woman. I know when she's at work and when she's out with friends, I remind her over and over again to not leave her hair on the walls of the shower, I make her favorite dinner because there are some days a girl just needs curry chicken. She's been my little girl for so long, the only other she in a house full of he.

I'm going to miss having her here.

You have these babies, you see, and for a long time all you do is raise them. And then one day, you wake up and realize:

They're raised. You get those 18 years with them, which at first seems like a freaking eternity but, when you get to the end, seems to be nothing more than a wink in time.

Eighteen years to teach them right from wrong, how to bounce back from bad times, how to make friends and hopefully how to keep friends. How to make change, how to deposit checks, how to write an essay and how to cut vegetables. How to scrub a toilet and fold a fitted sheet (okay, the toilet yes but gahh not the fitted sheet). How to keep promises and tell the truth and be kind and not mean.

Then it's over and you're left with piles of photos, a room that's eerily empty, leftover graduation party cake and a knot in your stomach that is comprised of joy and worry. You pray that you did your job well, and that the young adult you're sending out into the wilds of the world won't be a terrible roommate or a crappy friend or the kid barfing in the bushes at a kegger. You hope that they listened to your lectures but also heard your laughter. You wish that they find life and all of its messiness to be good and somewhat pleasant and please oh please not too scary.

So gather up your jackets, move it to the exits,
I hope you have found a friend,
Closing time, every new beginning,
Comes from some other beginning's end.

Rumor has it that Mr. Wilson wrote Closing Time in anticipation of his impending fatherhood, which makes lovely sense when you read the lyrics.

But I think it works just as well for those of us who are letting our boys and girls out into the world as the closing time of childhood quickly approaches.