First Day Deja Vu

Last year on the first day of school with all three girls gone, I found myself at the library with Tony. We both had our laptops. He was working, I was blogging. (Click here for that entry.) I distinctly remember having trouble concentrating because our company at Harry’s Bar Down Under (a coffee shop in the basement) was retired men having their morning coffee.

Well, yesterday was the first FULL day of school and again I found myself spending the morning with my husband. We were at Panera bread. He was working and I was passing the time reading while waiting for a store to open. We ended up by a group of young moms this time. And again, I had trouble concentrating due to their chatter, which got quite loud at times! I think I read each paragraph five times because I kept getting sidetracked by their conversation. Two tidbits have kept me laughing for the last 24 hours.

One conversation involved one of the mothers – seemingly a foster parent – who was going to be taking in a family of three very soon. You could sense the excitement in the group as they discussed throwing a shower even though they weren’t babies and how this was such a great way to add to your family without having an epidural ;) One lady said, “No really! This is great! My heart says, ‘One more kid; one more kid!’ But my husband says we are done. So I asked him, ‘Could we sign up to be foster parents?’ He answered with a firm NO and then proceeded to say, ‘Because the time would come for the kids to go back to their biological parents and you would be so attached…I’d be watching the news and an Amber alert would come on and it would be YOU they were looking for!’ ”

A few subject transitions later I heard this exchange: “So did anyone drop off their youngest for the first time today?”

Apparently someone named Heather raised her hand because the next thing I heard was… “Heather Drake! She is in FOURTH GRADE!”

I totally had to grin because I definitely know some moms like that!!