Kindergarten: Launch of the Second Period

September 24, 2007 – 3:55 pm |

We stood outside the school, hand-in-sweaty-hand, waiting for the bell to ring. I clutched a folder of multi-colored paperwork. He swayed eagerly from foot to foot with his TMNT backpack hanging light and empty over one shoulder (“the way the big kids carry them.”) We were about to embark on a new adventure – school age, the next era in parenting. But I wasn’t really thinking about all that.

I was thinking about Owen Wilson.

In the movie Armageddon, as his character prepares to launch into space and save the world from certain destruction by a huge asteroid, Owen Wilson delivers this line:

“I’m great, I got that “excited/scared” feeling. Like 98% excited, 2% scared. Or maybe it’s more. It could be, it could be 98% scared, 2% excited but that’s what makes it so intense, it’s so - confused.”

And that’s exactly how I felt about the first day of Kindergarten.

People told me this would be hard. Kindhearted friends gave us relevant books. The school sent me a parable printed on purple paper about kids climbing giant beanstalks and leaving their parents at the bottom. Neighbors stopped to commiserate. “I remember that day,” they said. “That’s a tough one. I think that was almost as bad as sending them to college.”

P’shaw. I thought. In usual fashion, I believed none of it. I enjoyed the tales and appreciated the sentiment, but I dismissed any presumption that I would feel conflicted. After all, we were talking about half day Kindergarten (only 2.5 hours of school!), and he had been going to preschool (For Three Years!). He’d been to daycare. He’d scored goals in Kick’n Kids and hit the field at Sports Mania. Plus, ever since he moved me to tears several months ago by fixing the whole family toaster breakfast all by himself, I had known he was ready for a new chapter of independence.

So, logically, I anticipated the transition would be easy, and I believed Kindergarten sentimentality would pass me by to prey on other, more overprotective mothers, less rational and easygoing than myself.

Of course, like so many preconceived notions of parenting before it, this belief turned out differently than I’d envisioned. And there I was, on the first day of school, standing at the door of Grandview Elementary with a pit in my stomach, a lump in my throat and a sweaty palm gripped by an eager six-year-old.

The bell rang. The doors opened. We walked in.

“Wow,” he said, with more excitement than fear and no trace of hesitation, as he hiked the backpack up his shoulder. “This is a pretty big school.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is.” (Too big. I thought. I don’t care what they say, there is NO WAY he’s ever going to be able to find his room by himself. He’s just little.)

“My room is this way,” he directed on cue, remembering from his tour, and pulling me reluctantly down the hall behind him.

We arrived at Room 16 and Mrs. Janney greeted him. “Hi!” she said invitingly – “Come on in and hang your backpack up.” “I’ll take those,” she said kindly, but dismissively, as she thumbed quickly through my papers. I understood this was my cue, but my feet were sort of stuck.

“So I just pick him up at the front at 11:40?” I asked. She nodded.

“I don’t need to come all the way down here?”

“Nope.” She shook her head, smiled and turned to talk to another sweaty-palmed mother clutching a manila folder of paperwork.

Over their shoulders, my son sat at a table visiting with some other kids. He caught my eye and waved, “BYE MOM!”

Ok. Time to Go. I turned and walked slowly back down the hallway, by myself, with empty hands, and I thought about my theory of The Three Thirds.

At age 6, my child is 1/3 of the way to 18. He’s 1/3 of the way done with his technical childhood. Before they depart for college, I get my kids for three six-year increments. The first was a torrent of emotion spent wrangling the child from activity to activity, from diaper to potty, from Velcro to laces, from temper tantrums to more purposeful emoting. All the parenting experts say we do the most good and damage in the earliest parts of that first third. And so I have run out of time for early molding. Long lost opportunities sat down the hallway behind me, at the table with my son and his new friends where he’d start putting it all to work.

Now, at the cusp of the Second Third, I don’t really know what to expect. I’m excited he gets to walk alone to class, but scared he’ll get lost or confused somewhere on the way. I’m excited to see where his interests lie, but scared I won’t be good at guiding him (I mean, good Lord, what if he likes something dangerous – like hockey or football). I’m excited to watch him learn to read, but I’m afraid of the day he’ll read the cover of Cosmo in line at the grocery store. I’m excited he’s long past the diaper years and scared to death he may soon start expecting to go into public restrooms by himself.

Clearly, I have that excited/scared feeling. I’m pretty sure I’m 98% excited, and 2% scared. But, well, it could be the other way around. That’s what makes it so intense, I guess.