Today is your day!

With my kids, I always think about time like sand in an hour glass.  As if when they were born, someone handed me a timer, flipped it over, slammed it on the table and said, “here is this beautiful baby, but enjoy it because in 18 years, it will be grown up and move out!”  Kindergarten marks five years of sand slipping through the glass, and while I still have a lot of time with him at home, I now know how quickly this time goes.  It started to become a reality when I registered him for school last Fall.  I could hardly believe it was already time to start thinking of which school he would attend for the coming years.  I entered him in a few school lotteries and was hoping he would get into a local charter school, near our house.  This school was where so many of our friends’ kids were going.  That was what I wanted.  The day that names were chosen for the lottery, I was upset to learn that his name was not chosen, and he was put on a wait list. It hit me,

Then, his name was chosen, but it was at a Spanish two-way immersion school.  This was an excellent opportunity for him and it was even closer to our house, but I wasn’t completely sold.  Kindergarten would be 90% in Spanish.  Was this the right path for him?  Would this be too difficult for him?  Knowing a second language has always served me very well, but was my baby ready to start school and learn a new language?  I decided that this was what was meant to be, and accepted the spot from the immersion program.  Then, we went to Mexico over the summer and he was so interested in learning the language.  He’s always loved learning and practicing new skills and when we got home, he bragged to his little sister, “I am starting Kindergarten and it is going to be really hard and I’m going to sit in a desk.”  He remembered a song about the Spanish alphabet that I used to use in the Spanish class that I taught and asked if I would play it for him every night before bed so he could learn his letters in Spanish before he started Kindergarten.  He started asking me how Spanish words were spelled so he could practice writing them.  In just a few days, he had taught himself the Spanish alphabet from a song he remembered hearing over a year ago.  It struck me what he was doing and how wonderful he is, completely on his own, this little boy was studying for Kindergarten!  He was excited about learning Spanish and I realized that everything happens for a reason.  Becoming bilingual was going to be an amazing opportunity for him and if it had been completely up to me, he never would have had this chance!  The challenge of learning a new language in school would fit his personality perfectly.  It was then that I realized,

Then came Kindergarten roundup!  I don’t know which of us was more excited!  I was looking forward to meeting his teacher, this person that would be sharing my little boy with me for the next year, I was looking forward to seeing his classroom and also curious about his Kindergarten assessment.  When his teacher came out, she grabbed his little hand.  I started to follow them, wondering what his classroom was going to look like, and how the desks would be set up.  Would she just show him around the classroom, or would she explain to him some of the routines?  Would his name be up on the wall already?  Did he have his own cubby?  Would we get to see his desk?  Then, she politely pointed to a bench where I could fill out his paperwork.  They walked into his classroom and shut the door behind them. As I looked at that closed door, I knew he was behind it.  I knew he was excited, I knew he was having fun, I knew he was kicking ass on his assessment, I knew he was proud of all his knowledge and the Spanish letters he had been practicing.  I also knew that although I was dying to be inside that room, I was where I belonged, outside this door, waiting on this bench.  It broke my heart a little when I realized that,

When they came out, his teacher was surprised that he was able to answer questions in English and in Spanish.  She might have thought that , since I am a Spanish teacher, I had been teaching him all summer.  She didn’t know he had been preparing himself all on his own.  As we talked, she commented on how little he looked climbing the monkey bars, but to me he looked big.  She didn’t know how little he was the day my doctor handed him to me five years ago.  I thought of a quote that I recently read by Elizabeth Stone, “Making the decision to have a child…it’s momentous.  It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.”  And there was my heart, swinging across the monkey bars, further and further away from me.  He would excel in Kindergarten.  He would make new friends, learn how to read, learn a new language, be kind to other kids, and have fun along the way.  This mountain was his and he was going to love his journey.

The day arrived and he was ready.  When I got out of the shower, he had woken up on his own and was sitting cross legged on the floor waiting for me to get out, so he could take his shower.  He got dressed on his own, brushed his teeth and was waiting with his backpack on at the door.  I was not surprised.  This was my boy who was born on his due date, who looks up his baseball cards before organizing them in his binders just in case the player has been traded since the card was printed, this is my boy who learned how to use Facebook messenger and voice recognition on my phone, so he could keep in touch with friends we met from the UK on vacation, this boy who memorizes the lineup for every sport event that is happening anytime in the near future and tells me what time we need to be home, so he can watch his favorite teams play.  He was ready for this day, even if I was not.

We arrived at his school, and he bravely walked right up to his teacher and gave her a hug.  Immediately, he found friends that he recognized from his baseball team this summer, and it made me smile to think that these would be the kids he would grow up with over the next few years.  He told me to grab a sheet of paper, because there was a first day scavenger hunt, he held my hand as we walked around his classroom, finding his cubby, the drinking fountain, his backpack hook and the circle carpet.  When we got to the bottom of the scavenger hunt, he kissed me on my hand and told me it was time for me to leave him.  So…..I did.  When I picked him up, I asked him what he did at school, expecting him to say, “nothing,” but he didn’t, he told me about it.  He said, “We learned how to go potty, how to use the sink at school, did some art projects, and that’s about it.” Then we went to get ice cream to celebrate, and I got to hear about who he played with at recess and how he got to get his own food in the lunch line.  This is a new chapter in our lives, a chapter where I have to let go and watch him as he climbs his mountains and becomes who he is going to be and my role now is to stand at the bottom and wait for him to come back and tell me about his adventures.