Home Again, Home Again.

I've officially started back to work this week. And Alex has started his new daycare. It's OK. It's just not the old place. I'm sure I'll adjust. Alex already has.

Regardless of the smooth transition, I'm still hoping that the Wonderful Daycare from whom I turned down a spot for Alex last spring like a stupid-ass idiot will call in the next few months. We're back where we were on the list, and well, if they called us before, that would mean we're at or at least near the top, right?

Like I said, I've officially returned to work, but really, I've been at the school almost every day for the last three weeks. We've finally moved in to a brand new school building. Our old building was about 100 years old. It was a beautiful building, but it was decrepit, and it didn't even come close to meeting the needs of our students. The available land in the area was so scarce that the district had to make the painful decision to demolish the old building and build the new school on the old site.

Fifteen months ago, we packed up everything in the building and moved into a temporary location, another old school building a few miles away from our school's neighborhood. Soon after that, a demolition crew leveled our old school. After teaching there for 13 years, it was hard to watch that old girl crumble.

Also difficult was having school away from our home neighborhood last year. Our students rode buses for the first time ever--our school is a "neighborhood school," and every student lives no more than two miles away from the campus. We weren't able to offer after-school tutorials or choir practice or team practices because many families could not provide transportation in the evenings. Performance suffered. Morale suffered. The children suffered.

But now, now we are home again. I've spent the last three weeks emptying crates, rearranging furniture, making name tags, and creating bulletin board displays. I often look out the window to enjoy the familiar view of the neighborhood. Although the view is the familiar, though, my immediate surroundings are not. Gone are the peeling walls, the mouse holes, the torn and stained carpet. Gone are the portable buildings and the aluminum walkway covers that never quite succeeded at keeping our students dry on rainy days. In their place stands a magnificent, spacious, state-of-the-art school.

Three large old oak trees stand where they have for the last hundred years. Several cast concrete embellishments from the old building adorn the new one. We're reminded that although the building is new, the spirit is the same. I know it's just a workplace. It's just a school. But for us, it is Home.