A Wrinkle in Time

Last year, I spent a great deal of time preparing a time line for my children. It included everything that we had studied throughout the school year in ancient history. To say that it was a rather large project would be an understatement, as I'm sure it could easily stretch across the length of a gymnasium. Towards the end of the school year, I decided it was time to unveil this fantastic exhibition of my handiwork, and so began an ill fated afternoon of disaster.
It was a still and quiet afternoon, but as I began to ceremoniously unfurl the timeline, the wind began to gust. My children tried to provide as much support as possible to the fragile timeline in the face of what now seemed to have become a small hurricane. I frantically tried to roll the paper back up as quickly as possible, but try as we may, I returned inside with five shredded chunks of timeline as opposed to the one, large, pristine roll that I went out with. It was covered with wrinkles, rips, smudges, and likely a few tears and drops of sweat too. I was so frustrated and angry, that I shoved it under the desk in our study where it sat in "time out" for almost six months. As our school year begins anew, I decided it was time to pull it back out and repair the damage as best as possible, and although I have told this story rather tongue-in-cheek, I did learn a few things from the experience.

• The example I set when dealing with adversity is a much more important lesson to my children than a timeline will ever be. 
• Tape works for broken time lines, but not for broken feelings. "Sorry" works better for that.
• Always check the weather before unfurling your work or beauty! ;)