We’re moving (and it’s still a secret). I’ve scheduled a home inspection of our current house, I just received an email from a new school’s secretary reminding me about a preview tour in a couple of weeks, and I just left a message with our new realtor in our new state. I’ve already compiled a list of 10 houses that I want the realtor to preview for us.

At the same time, I’m gearing up to help host about 200 folks at our general PTA meeting tonight. We’ll serve dinner, and thank all these families for all they have done for the school, encourage them to stay involved, to do what they can. We enlisted five students to do a reading of “The Three Questions” for the crowd. To that end, I took pictures of every page and turned the story into a powerpoint presentation, and to make sure all goes off without a hitch I’ve created a color coded script for all the readers. I’ve rehearsed with them… I asked our daughter’s teacher to have a role. I’ve gone crazy with this.

And this morning, our daughter said it felt weird that she wasn’t doing anything with the book, since the book was hers and her brother’s. So I amended my introduction to note that these two nice kids I know lent us the book.

And I think about all this, simultaneously, and tears form in my eyes. It’s ridiculous. It’s not sadness, per se. It’s something else.

Everybody wants to have an impact, a positive one, on their community. I think I have, I think our kids have, when it comes to our school. We have made a difference. I’m seeing this impact, I guess, as an imprint.

Like when you put your feet in the sand at the ocean’s edge… You make foot prints, and the water laps over your ankles and your feet sink deeper and deeper till you feel stuck, but comfortable, because that sand is holding you steady against the crash of waves.

But then at some point you have to pick up your feet. And it takes some effort, if you do it before the next wave. You see the places that your feet stood. And then the water comes rushing back, and there’s no trace of your footprints. Your feet were there, but only for a moment.

Yeah, it’s all hitting me kind of hard.