Good Afternoon Du Bois Friends and Families,
As the weather has gotten warmer and the days have gotten longer, I have observed what the 1942 Disney film, Bambi, described as being “Twitterpated” among a number of our students. Twitterpated is the state of near deliriousness that accompanies being young and in love–or at least “in like.” I see a marked uptick in hand-holding, lunch table rearrangements to accommodate new relationships, and quietly whispered locker-side conversations. This is just one of so many transitions we see here in our middle school, and among the thousands you witness and live through at home over the years of raising your children.
As you know, within each of our middle school students lives a host of different people–all with wants, needs, aspirations–all vying for attention and working to come together to be who a child really is as a whole, and who they are meant to be.
This process can be fun to observe, but as you parents know, it’s not a spectator sport. You are living it every day, and while it can be fun to stand back and watch, it can be exhausting to live.
As my wife and I were weathering our own household pre-adolescent and adolescent storms, my wife looked to the words of Julian of Norwich as an affirmation to ease our minds as the maelstroms sometimes raged. As our three have aged, our world at home has gotten smaller and our outside world has gotten more bewildering, we keep the affirmation alive in our home…and we certainly keep it alive here at Du Bois as we get closer to the end of the year.
All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
Have a peaceful weekend.
Jake M.
