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The lavender flowers on the tree that we pass every day on the way to school are blooming again. They’ll soon start falling and be picked up off of the sidewalk by my grandson, who’ll put them in his Spiderman backpack to take to his teachers or his mom or to use for his “art.”

I wrote a blog post several years ago about finding myself confused in a hair-care aisle. It came about after one of my daughters told me that if I wanted my hair to look good I needed to put “product” in it.

When you wake up at 5:20 a.m. (after also waking up at 12:30, 2:40 and 4 a.m. out of fear of sleeping through your 5:20 alarm) to get to the airport by 6 a.m. for your 7 a.m. flight and there’s no time for breakfast or for coffee, you know it’s not going to be one of your better days.

So, what’s up with the lack of siestas?

I’m back in Illinois this week – in the medium sized town that I lived in before following my older daughter to Mexico. It’s a town that sits in central Illinois, about 70 miles north of the smaller town that I grew up in.

Someone sent my daughter a picture of my four-year-old grandson eating lunch with a dozen or so of his fellow pre-schoolers. They’re sitting at a long table, all dressed in the identical white shirts and grey pants or grey jumpers that are the required school uniform.