The transition into middle school has been tough for me this year. There’s been a lot more homework, studying for tests, hormones and drama, new friends coming and old friends going, and did I mention the drama? Sixth grade has been a roller coaster, and I for one am ready to see what seventh grade brings. Oh, and my kid survived sixth grade, too.

As a parent, the older, wiser parents try to warn you about the dread that is dealing with a child in middle school. They tell you what to expect, they offer advice and an ear, and then they walk away, shaking their heads with a knowing look on their face that simply reads, “I don’t envy you at all.”

It’s not all been bad. Fortunately, I was blessed with a kid who is incredibly passionate about others and has a heart of gold. Though, that is proving to be a little bit of a curse too, as he learns to deal with conflict and drama. Don’t even get me started on middle school drama.

I’ve learned to not press for information as he’ll eventually share with me everything I could ever possibly want to know about who likes whom, what so-and-so said about so-and-so on Snapchat, or the million other things that everyone else is doing. He’ll tell me on his own terms. I know more about these kids in my son’s school than I think I ever did about my own classmates when I was in sixth grade (and, believe me, I knew a lot).

On Friday, as Michael and I head to our seventh-annual last day of school milkshake date at Winstead’s, I’ll sit back and wait patiently. The stories will come, and my advice will be heard through eyerolls and sighs. The whole time, I’ll be thinking how lucky I am to have these moments with my son. I hope the next six years go well for him, though maybe with a little less drama.

“If you weren’t the editor of the paper, and you could have done anything else with your life, what would you be doing?”

That’s the question that one little third-grade boy at Conn-West Elementary School in Grandview asked of me last week. I visited his class to talk about what I do and how I do it. I shared with third graders about covering the fire on Main Street a few years ago, and what it’s like to focus on the job I have in front of me and worry about my emotions later.

“How many of you have read a newspaper before?” I asked them. Nearly every hand in the room was raised. “How many of you have ever read the Jackson County Advocate before?” I asked. Only a handful of hands remained in the air. When I informed the students that would change that day, as I had brought a copy for each of them, you would have thought the pages were made of candy. “You mean we get to keep this?” one little girl asked me quietly. “Absolutely you do,” I answered as she beamed up at me with a toothless grin.

I can happily talk about my job with pretty much anyone, but when I have the opportunity to share my work with children, I get just as excited as they do. I love their questions. A lot of them asked me if I saw this car accident, or heard of this shooting. It amazed me how aware these third graders were of what goes on in their community, on their streets, and the impact events clearly have on their lives.

“Did you write about the kid who was killed while riding in the car with his dad a few months ago?” a small but obviously mighty boy asked me. “I sure did, and writing it broke my heart,” I answered him. “That was my cousin; we’re the same age,” he said. I squeezed this little boy and told him how sorry I was that that had happened to his family. It reminded me that news sometimes hits close to home, no matter how old you are.

I answered the first boy’s question. If I could be doing anything else, I’d still be writing. If money were no object, I’d travel the world and write other people’s stories. Having people open up to me about their passions, their heartaches, their families and their work, and then writing about it, is what I love doing. Everyone has a story to tell, no matter how old they are, where they come from, or what they thought they’d be doing with their lives.

Thank you, Conn-West third graders, for spending some time with me last week. And, thank you for your kind letters. To Savion, who says he wants to be a news writer just like me when he grows up, I hope you become one. And when you do, come see me and I’ll have a job waiting for you.

“Same question for you,” I asked that little boy. “If you could be anything at all when you grow up, what would you be?” I thought he’d say the President, or a teacher, or maybe even a firefighter. Suddenly, I was brought right back into the mind of a third grader with his response. “I think I’d be a wrestler,” he said.

I’ve always loved a good birthday party. One of my favorite parties when I was a kid was my eighth birthday at Skate Land. I think it was the first boy/girl party I had, and I remember feeling like a princess as all my friends came to celebrate me that day. We likely had a Barbie cake, I’m sure there were balloons and confetti, and I have no doubt I wore something befitting an eight-year-old starlet.

The Grandview Community has celebrated the birthday of Harry S Truman annually for as long as I’ve been around. Truman’s birthday is May 8. This year, he would be turning 134. For decades, Grandview has thrown the biggest birthday party for Truman.

The party has changed some over the years, but the reason remains the same. Truman’s legacy in Grandview lives on, and that’s enough of a reason to celebrate. His childhood home, the Truman Farm Home, will be open for tours on Saturday, May 5, following the parade that will take place at 10 a.m. in our historic downtown.

Harry’s Hay Days will begin on Friday night, May 4, though, with a free concert at the Grandview Amphitheater. The Stolen Winnebagos will take the stage at 7 p.m.

Like a lot of folks in Grandview who have been around a few years, I was disheartened to see the annual festival move to the east side of town. This year, it’s back on Main Street, though, right outside the front door of my office.

Along Main Street on Saturday, you’ll find vendors, entertainers, arts and crafts, food trucks, and I even heard there will be margaritas (it is Cinco de Mayo, after all).

This year, Harry’s Hay Days is a community event, with several different organizations helping with the planning and day-of work that goes into an event to honor and celebrate our former President.

If you’re able to make it down to Main Street on Saturday, stop by and say hi, I’ll be around, likely with a camera around my neck. Michael will be here, too. We’re excited to celebrate Truman’s birthday with all of our closest Grandview friends. I’m just curious if there will be a cake with 134 candles on it.

Several years ago, I remember sitting down with Mayor Jones and talking about our mutual desire for a locally-owned microbrewery (or something like that) in our city. Like any leader, the Mayor had dreams and vision for this community, and finally, that wishful thinking will be turned into reality.

The Chive, Simply Good and Transparent Brewing Company will soon begin to take shape along Grandview’s 150 Highway corridor, just north of Gail’s Harley Davidson. With hopes to open in the spring of 2019, restaurant owners Michelle and Mark Brown and their son, brewery owner Nolan Brown, have recently submitted building plans to the City of Grandview and Jackson County.

The Chive, Simply Good Cafe and Market will be a true farm-to-table concept, with 100% of their rustic-American dishes made from scratch using local ingredients. From soups, salads, sandwiches, pizza and homemade breads and desserts, the menu will offer a full-range of fresh, in-season elements made with love.

Much of the fresh ingredients will come from Michelle’s own garden, while she will make every effort to source as many ingredients as possible from local natural farmers and producers. She refers to her menu as “inconspicuously healthy.”

“We will be focused on sustainability in all aspects of The Chive, from our choice of building materials to hand dryers in the bathrooms, to native plants in our landscaping, to using reusable plastic tubs for supplier deliveries to an electronic menu board to returnable market containers and to-go containers,” she said.

The restaurant will be counter-serve, but with a nicer feel. Guests can expect to eat using real silverware and stoneware.

In the same building, right next door, son Nolan will lead Transparent Brewing Company. With several years of home-brewing and working in breweries large and small, Nolan will focus on sessionable, balanced beers. Knowing of the popularity of brewing at home, Nolan will take an educational approach to serving guests in his brewery.

“We believe in being completely open with our patrons and would love to sit down and chat about our processes and techniques,” he said. “We hope that every customer will leave our establishment having learned something new and gaining a deeper passion for beer.”

My son and I recently attended a tasting at the Browns’ home in Oak Grove. We tried an item from the under 18 menu, had incredible French onion soup, homemade soda and a broccoli chicken panini. I even tried a few of Nolan’s brews. Everything we had was fresh and delicious, and made us both eager for the side-by-side establishments to open next year.

Hours for the cafe will likely be daily until around 7 p.m., with the brewery to remain open later (except on Sundays). To follow their building and opening plans, both companies can be found on Facebook.

I have always loved old family photographs. My parents have a collection of my ancestors lining their staircase walls, and over the years, I have asked Mom to tell me the stories of the people in the pictures. Some she knows, others she doesn’t, but it’s always fascinated me to see myself or my son in those great-great-great relatives.

Even other people’s distant memories through photos pique my interest. When I visit friends’ houses, I love to see frames with grandparents long passed, or black and white images showing lineage from generations ago.

Recently, a friend who works for the Grandview Police Department sent me an email. Three years ago or so, she came across a photo in the parking lot at City Hall. Knowing it must belong to someone who might miss it, she picked it up. Asking around the police station, other city departments, and the Grandview Historical Society, she came up short.

Bob’s photo belongs to someone. The inscription, May the best of luck always come your way, indicates that whomever was in possession of this portrait from 1932 might be missing this charm. Bob is handsome, dressed and styled in a dapper way, and appears to have his whole life ahead of him.

Whatever happened to Bob? Did he join the military? Did he fight in any wars? Did he end up getting married, and having a family? Bob has likely passed away by now, but I’m certain someone out there misses him and his kind eyes and slight smirk of a smile.

Bob has a home somewhere, and I’m not convinced it’s on the desk of my friend who works at the police station. This is what I love about my job: telling the stories of our community, even the stories that I may know nothing about other than a short inscription in the bottom corner of a photograph from 1932. I do hope that Bob received some of that luck that he wished upon whomever he gave this photo to. And I hope we can find who he belongs to.

If you know anything about Bob, please email me at mwilson@jcadvocate.com, or call 816-761-6200. I’d love to be able to tell his story of luck, life and love.

A few weeks ago, my son Michael and I talked about what he would do if an active shooter entered his school. He’s practiced this, they’ve had drills and he seems to know what he’s supposed to do and how he’s supposed to react.

I pray to God that he never has to experience that, but I’m also not naive enough to believe it could never happen here. Tragedy can strike anywhere, at anytime, and as parents, we can only hope that our children will know how to best respond when faced with danger. Where will he go, will he try and fight, what happens if his teacher is injured?

These are the conversations that I, as a parent of an incredibly smart, handsome, compassionate kid, must have with my 12-year-old. Every day, he gets on the bus, and I almost have to hold my breath until he steps off of it at the end of the day. Every day, I have to worry whether or not he finished his homework, or if someone says something mean to him that sets him over the edge, or, God forbid, a gunman enters his school.

We don’t want to think about these awful tragedies happening in our own communities; yet time and again, we are forced to. I am forced to talk to my pre-teen son about things that I’m not even sure I fully comprehend.

I’m hopeful that something like what happened in Florida won’t happen in our community. When I watched the news coverage on television directly following the events on Valentine’s Day, I pictured my son, I pictured his friends, and I pictured his school.

My son is my whole world. Every day that he has been in it has been an indescribable blessing. I can’t imagine a world where he does not grow up, where he does not become someone who truly makes a difference in the lives of everyone around him. He used to always say he wanted to be a police officer who fights bad guys, but now he’s not so sure that’s what he wants to do. I can’t say I blame him.

The news stories haunt me as a parent. How easily that could have been here is in the back of my mind each and every day. Parkland may be in Florida, and I may be in Missouri, but that is our community, that’s our school, those are our kids. And I’m not okay with it.

January has been a rough one for me. Each week, I read police reports and officer accounts of some horrifying things that have happened in our community. The latest, last week, was about a little boy who was riding in the car with his dad and was shot and killed by a stray bullet. That little boy was 9-year-old Dominic Young, Jr., a third grader at Ingels Elementary School in the Hickman Mills School District.

At nine, Dominic would have still been playing with his new Christmas toys; he would have been picking out Valentines to give to his classmates in a few weeks. He would have been concerned about which kickball team he’d be on during recess or whether or not he got the answers right on the multiplication quiz the other day. At nine, we think our parents are superheroes, but we also become a little suspicious that maybe they’re just people, too.

Nine-year-olds should be able to ride in the car with their dads without getting killed. No third-grade kid should have to go to school on a Monday to find out the news that a friend has died due to an act of violence.

It’s stories like Dominic’s that keep me awake at night. They’re worse than nightmares, because they’re true. Every horrid detail, every bone-chilling testimony, every innocent face crosses my mind, and I can’t help but wish I could do more.

I love my job. I’m passionate about writing the stories of this community, and it is a job that I don’t take lightly. I thoroughly enjoy writing about the good news, and the amazing people I come across; but I wouldn’t be doing my job well if I didn’t talk about the things our community struggles with.

I believe there is a greater good to what I do each week. I believe that community journalism is a powerful tool that keeps our elected officials in check, puts our neighbors in a positive light, focuses on the things and people that truly matter. If I didn’t believe those things, then I’d be in the wrong field.

As I lay my head down each night, I remain hopeful that things will be better, that the next paper I put out will be full of uplifting stories. I have faith in our community, I have faith in our leaders, and I have faith in the press. As a journalist, it is my job to become somewhat of an expert on the topics I write about, and as a reader, you become one, too. A bit of a know it all, if you will.

Whether the news is good or bad, whether it makes me angry or glad, I will keep on writing it as long as you keep on reading it. Become an expert with me on our community. Make a change, starting at home. Know it. All. Read the newspaper.