This post, brought to you by the letter “M”

How do you encourage college kids this time of year? They have just had a month off, the holidays are over, and they are now on the second semester, at the halfway point. It is the dead of winter and summer seems forever away. It’s not that anticipated beginning of a new school year, and it’s not the end they are so relieved to reach. It is the middle, and that’s where they are stuck. Thus, the postcard of the week.

Well, I realize now that I grew up being stuck in the middle of most things. In fact I was even born right in the middle of the United States, just a little south of where I live now. When I was a kid in school, and we had to line up alphabetically, I was always right in the middle. With the last name McCulley, that is where you would always find me.

I wasn’t a middle child, however. There are only my sister and I, so being the younger one I was not the middle, but the little one. This too had its way of ensuring a middle position in my world. I was always stuck in the middle of the back seat with a car full of people, usually having to sit on someone else’s lap. And then there is the yearly class photo. Every year the littlest one in the class was stuck sitting on the floor, in the middle of the front row, holding the class sign. Every year that little person was yours truly. Need I say more. The evidence is here. The clue ~ pink has always been my favorite color. :)

Well, as I am now middle-aged and can look back on it all, I realize that being stuck in the middle isn’t such a bad place to be after all. In fact it is a very happy place to be. There is a security and a peacefulness about this place in life and I welcome it happily.

So, if this time of year makes you feel like you’re stuck between the excitement of the holidays and the activities of the summer months, or if you’re right in the middle of your school year, take heart and remember that nothing has a beginning and end without a middle. As the song says . . . stuck in the middle with you . . . I think that’s a pretty good place to be.