Today, Thing2 graduated from kindergarten. I used to think that kindergarten graduations were kind of silly and pointless - I mean, who doesn't graduate from kindergarten? You might get held back in first grade, you might drop out of school or fail classes and never graduate high school, but everyone gets through kindergarten, right?
But honestly, as I felt the pride of seeing Thing1 graduate three years ago, and again as I was watching the kids today in their paper hats, earnestly performing painstakingly memorized songs in low, stage-fright voices, it hit me that the graduation is really for the kids sake. It's a way of telling them without telling them that now their lives are never going to be the same. School is no longer going to be about tying your shoes and singing your ABC's, about sharing your crayons and having recess and snack time. From here on out, it starts to be work. You can still have fun, but that's just a benefit or a side effect, not a goal.
I was struck when one of the teachers mentioned that the kids would be graduating high school twelve years from now. Twelve years does not seem to be as long as it did ten years ago. Or fifteen years ago. Twelve years is an eye-blink, a nap, an afternoon with the kids away. I tried, but couldn't imagine, my kindergarten graduate in a cap and gown. But then again, when he was three, I couldn't imagine him being almost seven and graduating kindergarten, eager for the 'real learning' of first grade. Every age seems like the only age the boys will ever be, until I am shocked into realizing that they have grown up again.
My memory is terrible, which is one of the reasons I originally began writing - I started my first journal in fifth grade, I think; sometimes it seems like the only way to keep that moment and my impressions of it fixed in my mind for more than a few days or weeks or months. It provides me with a record to refer to, so that when my reality changes I can look back and say, this is what my world used to be. I wish I had had more time when they were little to write down what things where like, all of the little things they did and said that made up the hills and valleys of my days then. Now, all I have left of those days is a few tattered memories floating in my head, and a few often-told stories that have already acquired the impersonality of legends. I keep encouraging myself, trying to improve my memory by saying "This is something special that you will remember, the way he talks right now, the little lisp, the gaps in his smile" but I won't know if it works until years later, when I try to remember this fleeting moment...
Anyway, the point of this was that the graduation is a marker, a way to memorialize this transition of our children from our babies to big kids. For them, it's a thrill and exciting and maybe a little scary... for me, I just hug him tight and try to hold on to what he looked when he was three, dancing under the cherry trees.
But honestly, as I felt the pride of seeing Thing1 graduate three years ago, and again as I was watching the kids today in their paper hats, earnestly performing painstakingly memorized songs in low, stage-fright voices, it hit me that the graduation is really for the kids sake. It's a way of telling them without telling them that now their lives are never going to be the same. School is no longer going to be about tying your shoes and singing your ABC's, about sharing your crayons and having recess and snack time. From here on out, it starts to be work. You can still have fun, but that's just a benefit or a side effect, not a goal.
I was struck when one of the teachers mentioned that the kids would be graduating high school twelve years from now. Twelve years does not seem to be as long as it did ten years ago. Or fifteen years ago. Twelve years is an eye-blink, a nap, an afternoon with the kids away. I tried, but couldn't imagine, my kindergarten graduate in a cap and gown. But then again, when he was three, I couldn't imagine him being almost seven and graduating kindergarten, eager for the 'real learning' of first grade. Every age seems like the only age the boys will ever be, until I am shocked into realizing that they have grown up again.
My memory is terrible, which is one of the reasons I originally began writing - I started my first journal in fifth grade, I think; sometimes it seems like the only way to keep that moment and my impressions of it fixed in my mind for more than a few days or weeks or months. It provides me with a record to refer to, so that when my reality changes I can look back and say, this is what my world used to be. I wish I had had more time when they were little to write down what things where like, all of the little things they did and said that made up the hills and valleys of my days then. Now, all I have left of those days is a few tattered memories floating in my head, and a few often-told stories that have already acquired the impersonality of legends. I keep encouraging myself, trying to improve my memory by saying "This is something special that you will remember, the way he talks right now, the little lisp, the gaps in his smile" but I won't know if it works until years later, when I try to remember this fleeting moment...
Anyway, the point of this was that the graduation is a marker, a way to memorialize this transition of our children from our babies to big kids. For them, it's a thrill and exciting and maybe a little scary... for me, I just hug him tight and try to hold on to what he looked when he was three, dancing under the cherry trees.
