First, the official book stuff update:
The kickstarter fundraising campaign for book 4 “The Ember and the Knife” will launch next Monday. So clear off a little room on the ol’ credit card, stretch your retweeting/facebook sharing muscles, and get ready to cheer the project on. Go go go! I’ll post updates here as the thing rolls along, and hopefully we hit the goal well before the end date (beginning of October).
And now for something completely unrelated: my boy is growing up and I’m trying to handle that.
Yesterday was day one of Grade Three. Grade three is the point where my own childhood memories start to become cohesive. Instead of just flashes of random moments, I can recall full situations and the people within. Should I compare my experiences to my child’s? I’ll give that a complicated ‘yes’ as an answer, with a long list of provisos (provisos available upon request).
And to be honest, my sense of time passing and his growing older hit me the day before school started. I was out for a walk around Springbank Park, and as I passed Storybook Gardens, I realized it had been at least a year since Max and I went there. It used to be our weekly destination, back when he was wee. Now he’s too tall for a lot of the activities, and too old to enjoy others.
To top it all off, I let him walk to school on his own this morning. This is a trip that is exactly 2 and a half blocks in length, with one 3-way stop to cross, so we’re not talking about the world’s most dangerous excursion. But there’s still something scary about not confirming with my own eyes, for sure, that he has set foot on school property. I know the school would call me if he didn’t turn up. I know he’s a smart kid. And I know this is part of growing up. I have to get used to trusting him to handle the unknown world and all of the surprises and obstacles it throws at him. I can’t helicopter parent him forever (though lord knows I want to).
Chris Loblaw, Author 