Beginnings and Endings

Posted at 9:30 PM, Sunday, December 14, 2008

We are once again racing through the rituals that bring the school year to an end. The kids have had their last day of Scouts, their last day of school, their last day of Sunday school, and awarding of Sunday school certificates. Yonatan's social skills group has finished up, but the end-of-year party is still to come on Monday evening. Both boys have one more swimming lesson each this next week, and then we will be well and truly out of activities until Scouts resume at the very end of January. Bobby is launching a number of ambitious summer projects with the boys: building model airplanes, building boxes for art supplies, and building robots. I am madly scouring websites for information on summer holiday programming, and we are both gearing up for a long seven weeks.

We marked a number of endings and beginnings with the close of the school year. Nadav has completed his second and last year as a Joey Scout. His Joey mob went bowling on Monday evening, and then we drove over to a nearby park where Yonatan's Cub Pack was meeting. Nadav joined in the fun in anticipation of his new status as a big boy Cub Scout next year. For the next year, Yonatan and Nadav will be in Cubs together before Yonatan moves up to real Scouts once he turns eleven. We are looking forward to having just the one meeting each week, plus the fact that both boys are now considered old enough to go on camps without parents.

By far the hardest ending of the last several weeks was the death of Cubs leader Barbara Bruer, known in our household as Akela Barbara. Barbara died ten days ago a little less than a year after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. Although she began treatment not long after the school year started, she continued to attend meetings regularly and to to pass her wisdom on both to children and parents. She was a master scout leader and enormous gift to the kids who were part of her pack.

I attended the funeral last Monday, which was held in a broad meadow in Belair National Park. It was a sparkling summer day--warm, but not hot. The squawking of birds distracted us from the service, and butterflies flew down around the coffin. Di Hulse, director of the mighty venture which is 1st Beaumont Scouts, read an excerpt from the works of world scouting founder Robert Baden Powell, and Yonatan's cub leader Greg Bek read it again at the meeting that evening: “While you are living your life on earth, try to do something good which may remain after you. One writer says: "I often think that when the sun goes down the world is hidden by a big blanket from the light of heaven, but the stars are little holes pierced in that blanket by those who have done good deeds in this world. The stars are not all the same size; some are big, some are little, and some men have done great deeds and others have done small deeds, but they have made their hole in the blanket by doing good before they went to heaven." Try to make your hole in the blanket by good work while you are on earth.” Barbara left behind a huge, sparkling hole in our lives, and we are very sorry to lose her.