Mom on the Run: A yearbook isn’t just for students

Lianne Wilkens/Columnist
Published: June 15, 2008

I walk in the door and ask, as usual, "How was school?" And today, finally, something besides the standard shrug and, "OK." Today, my son pops his head out of his bed-room door. "Well?," he prompts, waiting for more, "What have you been asking me every day?" "Um …." I stall. "Yearbook?," he reminds me.

"Oh! You got it?!" He nods, ducks back inside his room. "In my back-pack," he says, and goes back to whatever important thing he was doing.

I U-turn down the stairs and head for the heap in the hallway. I dig out the yearbook, hold it up, take it in. My son's middle-school yearbook is clean and new, with still-sharp corners. "Hoofprints 2008" is printed boldly on the cover, and there on the bottom … I inspect the embossing, the spelling of his name, the band, football, and lacrosse icons. I got lucky on that lacrosse icon, a spring sport, when I ordered the yearbook back in the fall. Whew. Nice, very nice.

Dinner can wait, I figure, and I sit down at the quiet dining room table and crack open the book. There is already a thick black scrawl on the inside cover: "HAGS!!" Have A Good Summer—ha! Friends wrote that in my yearbook back in the '80s! I bet I find "Stay cool in the pool!" in here, too!

Candids are at the beginning, of course, and I study each one, looking for my son and his friends. This yearbook has clubs before classes, and I inspect the group pictures closely, checking out each tiny face, then look slowly at each individual picture.

Wow, Brandon looks very different with short hair. Andrew looks much more grown-up than last year. Shane looks unnaturally serious in his picture; I almost didn't recognize him! And ooh, here's Brittany, my son's girlfriend. I look at that picture extra-hard.

I studied my daughter's yearbook the same way, page after page, and while it was much thicker, with four grades instead of two and more clubs, and took me at least twice as long, I think I like this one better.

The middle-school yearbook is more poignant; it hits me harder. These kids … well, they're still kids. The high schoolers are young adults, they're starting to look put together, consis-tent, and comfortable with whom they are. Seventh-graders, by contrast, are a mess of braces and in-between hairstyles. Half are dressed up, and half either forgot or are deliberately making a statement. Most smile, some broadly and some hiding braces, but a few seem to be trying hard to look indifferent. And then there's the kid with his eyes shut tight, but big, eyebrows raised high, and with a glorious grin, it had to be on purpose.

Finally I'm done, and I close the yearbook. I checked in on JP and Stephen and Jennifer, kids I used to see often but who are in different circles now. I found my son's teachers and I put faces with new kids' names. Everyone looks healthy and happy; everyone is growing up. And I get up to start dinner, though I am full inside.

Lianne Wilkens lives with her family in Manassas. She can be reached at .