Tonight Geoff had a long awaited meeting.
Two years ago he became a Star Scout in Boy Scouts, and has dragged his feet on finishing some merit badges that were required to move him up in rank.
Over the summer he got Lifesaving, and had been working on Camping pretty much since he started Scouting. He is one requirement away from Physical Fitness, and has one meeting left with that merit badge counselor.
A few weeks ago he stepped up his game, met with the Camping merit badge counselor, and started knocking off the remaining requirements. He finished up the badge and had to wait two weeks for his Scoutmaster conference since we missed a meeting and the Scoutmaster missed the following meeting.
He's been chomping at the bit for this review, this conference. And it happened tonight. We had our town's Memorial Day observance, and afterwards the boys went down to the playground under town hall to run around and play crash into things kinds of games that they love. Geoff and Tom sat on the park bench, and fifteen minutes later he came to the car where I was sitting.
Success. Now he needed two committee members, and I couldn't be one of them, to do the board of review. Two showed up and he spent time with them, got his review and advanced in rank.
He's rather pleased with himself... Now he needs five more non-Eagle required badges and five Eagle required (or is it 6?) and an Eagle project to become an Eagle Scout.
Long time readers of this blog know that our journey with Geoff has been challenging. If you read all of our archives, entry by entry, many of them concern him being kind of a nightmare in elementary school. Bungee jumping out of trees, continual issues with school, with temper tantrums, with freaking out over all kinds of things. It took a long time for us to figure out how Geoff's mind worked, and how to deal with him, and a lot of maturity on his part to get to this point.
He has 18 months before he turns 18 years (well, 19 months really ... January 2015). He has to complete this leg of his journey before then, and I think he can do it.
I believe he can do it.
The person he is today is one that I love so deeply and so dearly. I always have loved him but a lot of times it was with a "I love him but he's gonna make my head explode" kind of sentiment. If he doesn't make Eagle, I won't love him any less.
I will, however, invite everyone who doubted him. Everyone who sat across from me at Sped meetings or disciplinary meetings and told me that my son was a problem and needed to be removed from the school. I will invite each and every person who didn't think that Geoff could be awesome. I will ask them "so, how do you like him now?"
Gloating and prideful boasting aren't things I usually do, but so help me God there are some people I want to look in the eye and go "yeah. Check it out."
So, over the next 19 months, send him mojo. I hope the next picture I post is of him at the dias, on the podium, delivering his Eagle Response, or pinning me with my Eagle mom pin.
He started this journey on March 2, 2007. Here's to the journey's end.
No comments:
Post a Comment