Junior Year

We found a cemetery in Hong Kong.

Today has been rough. With our exciting excursions and friend visit behind us and nothing else on the horizon but the reality of the upcoming holidays to be spent away from family, I have found myself in a yuck funk.

And I love my kids, you know I do, but I had reached some wall of being hugged out, touched out, talked out, and I needed to find a way to get myself some separation from our constant togetherness. Yeah, I felt all that around 10 a.m. (Adult Tucker and Adult Hudson, your mama loves you more than anything, but we have been together continually for like 11 weeks now. I have been away from you only four times for more than two hours. Go easy on me tomorrow, I beg you.) But I digress. 

I desperately want to create a massive wall countdown calendar to sanctify our departure date, but am certain that would be a faithless thing to do. I am sure there is a reason why we need to be in China for another couple of months. Sigh. 

Recently I was blessed with a phone call to my touchstone, the witty and wise seventy-plus years young, Lolo, when I mentioned that we were getting close to our halfway point in the trip.  I have not sat down with a calendar to confirm the exact day mostly because we still are not sure when we are going to leave. She encouraged me not to find out. "Remember the junior year? You just want to be finished and you have two more years."

On the Star Ferry crossing from Hong Kong island to Kowloon.

Ugh. Waaaaah. I just want to be done already. I wanna go home. Maybe I am just as needy today as the kids. Sorry, little men. We are all allowed to have a grumpy moment.

So here I sit, somewhere at the beginning of junior year. I survived the stress of "freshman" year. (Adding on those required freshman fifteen from copious amounts of fried rice and vegetables. Kidding, not kidding.) "Sophomore" year was pretty comfortable; we caught ourselves in a China rhythm. Now it is time to get my ducks in a row and keep on truckin' because once I survive this stretch, "senior" year will surely fly by. Maybe I should start looking forward to all those graduation parties that will come in the form of the reunions I will have all of you. Someone call and reserve The Willard for me.

Throughout our trip I have maintained sanity with a group of select quotes, aphorisms, scripture, and maybe even some song lyrics. This has been a mantra since the beginning, so I will lean on it now: