Homecoming

I may have mentioned once before that where we live now is a place we have lived before. We lived here for about nine years before The Husband was transferred. We moved away but after two years, were still not happy at our new location. The Husband managed to get transferred back to his old place and, very happily, we moved back "home."

They say you can never go home...you can never go back, and, to some extent, I get that. What it was while you were gone is always so much more than it was in reality. The memory fogs the reality..."absence makes the heart grow fonder."

We've been back for almost a year and it has been one of the most difficult years of our lives. For the most part, the transition for The Girl has been absolutely seamless. Life for her has been good. She loves her new coaches and her new gym; she has really excelled there. School has been rather smooth for her. Many of her friends are still here and they welcomed her with open arms. She has straight As and is happy.

The Husband transitioned into his job smoothly enough. Sure, there is drama...where is there NOT drama?! He's happy, though. He is doing what he wants to do...what he'd been working toward all along. As always, there are micro-management issues (see above-mentioned drama), but The Husband is really good at his job and everyone who knows him knows that.

After the panic of not having a job, I ended up with one and am happy with it too. Like The Husband, there is some drama, but I'm OK with it. I'm a high school teacher. Drama is practically in the job description! I have great kids and work with some amazing people. My happiness, however, is only in my job. My life outside of work is not so good, which leads me to the other member of our family.

The Boy has had a horrible transition. If you were one to pay attention, you might notice more posts have been dedicated to him than to The Girl. Not many more and I guess many of the posts I wrote were only in my mind...they never made it to the blog! Anyway, as I was saying, The Boy has had a difficult time this year. His biggest issue came when he got into a fight at school. That happened back in January. It was not pretty. The school called and I went in. We discussed everything and The Boy took full responsibility for all that happened. Despite the fact that the other boy egged him on, The Boy threw the first punch; he was wrong. He knows that and took responsibility. The problem then came from the fact that the school labeled him as one with "anger issues." This label got completely out of hand; everyone was saying it...including some of the younger students. The Boy was starting to believe it. Kids were pushing buttons trying to put The Boy over the edge...they wanted to enrage him. They wanted to see him get into trouble. There was a lot of name-calling, button pushing, bullying, etc. I went to the school; they said it would stop. For the most part, it did (after another month or so). There are still boys who enjoy being jerks, but no one seems to care enough to stop them. Whatever...

Which brings us to now. It is important to mention, by the way, that aside from the one fight, we have NEVER been notified by the school that there have been any other issues. No one has called, emailed, or done anything to let us know things are not all fine and dandy. If it wasn't for the fact that The Boy is so darned honest about everything, we'd have no clue of all the other minor incidents that have occurred...times he's gotten into trouble for being on the receiving end of some garbage; times he's tried to stop fights; times he overstepped his bounds and tried to correct others. (We KNOW he is not entirely without fault. We live with him...we know what he is like.) I will say I did receive one phone call from a friend who told me about an incident after school one day where The Boy got into it with a friend. He and this friend are a volatile pair; they get along well, but they argue a lot too. This was an argue day...and everyone saw it. Again, no one actually called on behalf of the school.

Yesterday, The Boy came home to tell us that Field Day had been taken from him. Did the school call us? No. Did the teacher contact us? No. The Boy told us that his friend was about to get into a fight with another child and The Boy stepped in to stop it. He was reprimanded. He lost Field Day. His friend tried to tell the principal that The Boy did nothing wrong and was trying to help, but the words fell on deaf ears. Remember...The Boy has a label. He has "anger issues." No one is listening. I should point out that when The Boy got into that big fight in January, another boy stepped in to stop it, and, in so doing, hit The Boy. We were informed no discipline action would be taken toward that boy because he was trying to help. I have no problem with that, but if that is the case, why is The Boy being punished for trying to help HIS friend?

There is really no reason for my posting all this other than to get it out. They are right. You can never go back home. And yet, despite it all, The Boy has straight As (not one grade is below 100% and he is the only student in the sixth grade who is in the advanced seventh grade math class). The school did not bother to label him as a "smart kid" because they were too busy with the "anger issues" they made up.