starting the new term

We're all starting new studies in our own way this month.
My eldest grandson starts Uni in a week's time, studying law, away from home. The transition will be hardest on my daughter, his Mum. They're very close, so she'll miss him. She'll also certainly worry about him - these days there are such awful things happening to young people, maybe rarely but enough to keep a parent worried. Hard to let go without the certainty that he'll be alright.

The younger grandchildren start a new term, but at the same school. Their mother, my daughter-in-law, is in the middle of a University course which she loves but which is hard to combine with kids at school. It's been a huge change in her life, having not ever really having studied before. It's great remembering that one has a brain: like waking up from a trance of domesticity.

I remember doing my teacher training when my kids were young. What a joy it was just to be me at college, not someone's mother or someone's wife.

and as for me, I've started an MA in Creative Writing. It's going to be a real challenge and a lot of hard work. I'm not in need of an MA, but I am in need of learning to be a better writer of fiction. It's interesting being in a mixed group, of whom I'm more or less the oldest, with the youngest young enough to be my grandchildren.

And I'm thankful for the stable factors in our family, my son and son-in-law, who hold things together by their steadiness and love.