Each year the parents of my children's elementary school host a welcome back barbecue during the month of September. All the other logistics aside, the greatest challenge of recent years seems to have been how to get people to actually come to the barbecue. Which honestly is a bit odd to me, given that our school is relatively small, less than 300 children from kindergarten through grade 7. We are quite a tightly knit little community, what I would almost call a small town in the midst of a much larger city. Many of my parental peers actually grew up themselves in this same area, went to the same schools as our children now attend. But for some reason, people drifted away from each other, and consequently from supporting our school as a group too. Granted, it can be very difficult to maintain relationships with other parents and families if you are working long hours yourself, which leaves very little time left over for your own family, let alone your friends.
But last night something kind of amazing happened. Blame it on the nice late summer/early fall evening full of sunshine, or maybe the full moon that appeared later on, but it was fairly overwhelming, and certainly unexpected. Forms had been sent home inviting everyone to come and requesting that food orders be filled out so that we could gauge how many people to cook for. A small group of us parents spent the day of the barbecue shopping, slicing and dicing on the verge of hysteria (trust me, you try cutting up onions for almost 3 hours with someone who has resorted to wearing their daughter's bright blue swimming goggles in an attempt to keep from onion induced helpless weeping) and setting up all the necessary tables, chairs, food, drinks etc. The pre-order forms had come back with decent numbers, so by the end of the school day all we had left to do was sit back and hope everyone showed up.
Within the first half an hour though, we could see that our event was shaping up to be something completely different. The families started to arrive, and they just kept coming. And it wasn't just the folks who had filled out their order forms ahead of time. There were almost as many people showing up on the spur of the moment, hoping to be able to pay for supper on the spot and join in the fun. While I tried to split myself between the barbecue station, the condiments and drinks area, and the ladies selling the extra food tickets, I noticed a near identical look on the faces of all the parents who were volunteering to run the show. Everyone was wearing a look of almost fierce concentration and excitement, which I realize today was a result of the pride I would say we were all feeling at having somehow managed to bring all these people together. Not to mention the atmosphere in the gym and on the playground - it was almost electric. Incredibly, we ended up almost selling out of all our food and drinks by the end of the evening. I believe there were eight hamburgers left, and a few diced tomatoes and onions which are currently brewing in my crockpot as spaghetti sauce. A great many hands other than those who had signed up to help turned out to clean up and by 7pm the evening was a wrap, and we went home fairly exhausted but definitely exhilarated.
Why was it different this year? Maybe that's just how things go, you cycle through some bad years and then back through some good years, I don't know. But there was something in the air last night for sure, something exciting. And I wasn't the only who felt it - many parents and teachers expressed to me the same feelings that I was having. So now we have to ride the wave, keep this good vibration going. Something interesting definitely happened on the way to the barbecue. What's next?
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