I know, I know. This is the time of year when sentiment abounds.
We write you notes, we give you flowers, we pass out gift cards like there is no tomorrow.
Because let’s be honest you really deserve an all-expense paid vacation to the Bahamas.
EVERY BLESSED ONE OF YOU.
So that twitch in your eye?
The one that says, “Farts, boogers and ill-advised hygiene I can handle. But if I have to answer one more question that starts with, ‘My name, My name, My name, My name, My name…’ I'm gonna need a Valium?”
We feel you.
It’s the same one we’ll all have when we send them back to you in the fall.
But it’s May.
The time of year where we say thank you, along with giving you every blessed thing we can think of under the sun. Because what we are really saying is this…
Thank you.
Thank you for all the days you looked passed the bad breath and the farts and the nose-picking and saw our kids as something worth your time. Thank you for loving their quirks and weird obsessions with Batman and Shopkins and Taylor Swift. Thank you for reminding us that those weird obsessions could someday give way to dreams.
No, seriously. Thank you.
Thank you for listening to 30 recorders AT A TIME and not promptly leaving for Tahiti. Thank you for teaching them Picasso and Monet and for accepting books with weird stains and rips that we promise we tried to prevent. Thank you for all the skinned knees and wild games and gym brawls you met with a smile.
Just really, thank you.
Thank you for loving our kids on their hard days, their easy days, their loud days and if they had them, their quiet days. Thank you for holding their hands, their backpacks and the weird thing they wanted to show you for the eighteenth time. Thank you for accepting all the scrap pieces of paper and weeds and things out of the toy bin that suddenly turned into a gift you had to have.
Now you know where they get it from.
Because just like our nose-picking darlings, we see something remarkable in you.
Someone who will walk into our stories, no matter the twists and turns taken and love us just as we are but also inspire us to become something more.
So just in case you didn’t hear us the first time, “Your name, your name, your name, your name, your name…”
Thank you for the way you inspire and grow and value the people we love most. You carried their hearts for a little while but now we'll carry a piece of yours. And know that when we say thank you a million times over?
We really mean we love you a whole hoot of a lot.