I’d post about educational policy or workplace climate or some other topic. If I could form a full sentence. But I can’t. My younger son is halfway through his first day of kindergarten, and I can’t stop thinking about him.
He got on the bus today with his 4th grade brother, eyes full of nerves, excitement, confusion, and maybe a tinge of sadness. All of this was apropos, considering my wife and I had a similar melange of emotions running through us – especially the sadness part.
I remember when our first son went onto the school bus for his first day of kindergarten. Someone had told us that the years leading up to school sort of crawled by and that once school years started time would fleet by alarmingly quickly. Considering he’s now starting 4th grade, that has certainly held true.
We were also told that he would somehow be different at the end of his first day of school than he was at the beginning. And that too has held true. In the hours apart, he’s influenced by people we don’t know, learning things we haven’t taught him, and meeting friends we haven’t met. Each person and experience slowing shaping and re-shaping him in ways entirely out of our control.
I think that’s part of the sadness.
Peter’s only 5. And with school starting, that ends a period of sort of being the center of his sphere of influence. He’s now in the hands of a much larger world. And our job is to trust those hands and hope that they love and care for him as much as we do.
Despite his backpack reaching from the back of his head to his ankles, he already looked older and bigger simply walking down our familiar street to the bus stop. And somehow, when we see him tonight at the end of the day, he will have already changed and grown up even more.
While I already miss the smaller, younger version of Pete, I can’t wait to meet the emerging Pete. While I want him to stay a little boy forever, I can’t wait to see who he becomes now that he’s in school.
But mostly, I can’t wait to see you at the end of today.
Scott Butler told me I needed to read your blog today but little did I know I would have tears in my eyes at the end! The first day of school is such a monumental time. My oldest is in 8th grade and last week, he had the courage to turn in a couple of kids in his class that have now faced major consequences for drug possession at school…and as I read your blog I think back to his first day of kindergarten. You hope and pray that as they grow and change, they will become even stronger from those difficult times that we tend to want to protect them from – and when it proves true you want to stand up and shout it from the rooftops!
My colleague in the next office gave birth to a son yesterday. It is an amazing thing to celebrate the milestones – birth, the first day of kindergarten, when you start to see glimpses of the man that your son is becoming…I am really grateful to simply have the opportunity to be a parent and only hope that I am teaching my son a small fraction of what I am learning from him!
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