Lily starts Kindergarten tomorrow.
Am I ready for this? No.
Is it happening? Barring apocalypse, yes.
It’s hard to say exactly how I feel about this milestone because I have avoided indulging or examining my feelings too much. I spend most of the time facing it with something like controlled resignation, but then, at other times, I become quickly emotional...like when I got weepy at church this morning, the theme of which was change and transition. Life is full of seasons, the pastor reminded us, and every disruption is an opportunity. That is true, of course, but it still hurts.
Of all of my feelings, I cannot say that I am happy. I am proud of Lily and confident that she can do very well, but I am not happy to let her go. Some of my reticence is simply pragmatic. We’re not morning people in the Rerecich house, and five days a week of 7:35 start times is going to be rough, to say the least. You might not want to visit us until mid-October at the earliest. It won’t be pretty.
I also have reservations about the public school system. Yes, Matt and I both went through it and came out fine. We even enjoyed elementary school. But much has changed since we were young, and things seem a lot more beaurocratic and intrusive from the parental perspective than they did from my childhood one. I just read the TEKS standards for Kindergarten, and the PDF document was 28 pages long. It should not take 28 pages of legalistic jargon to explain what you want to see a child do after a year in kindergarten. Nor do I think it proper, incidentally, that a kindergarten graduate should understand intellectual property law (section 126.6.5) while she is not yet required to be literate (section 110.11). I must also say that that the school handbook and Michel Foucault’s writings on power and surveillance do not make a happy pairing. Though I try to remind myself that I have friends who are teachers, and that they are understanding, normal people who are not out to usurp my parenthood, the public school system is, unavoidably, a system, and systems can be dehumanizing.
Those worries aside, however, the most emotionally laden aspect of kindergarten is its symbolic significance as the end of early childhood. Being happy or excited about kindergarten seems to mean being excited to say goodbye to Lily’s toddler and preschool years, which I have cherished as unmistakably the best time of my life so far. It also seems to mean welcoming the decrease of my time and influence in Lily’s life. If her daily routine is a pie chart, my slice of it is about to shrink substantially. Of course I do not want to stop Lily from growing up, and I do not want to hamper her individuality and potential. Growing up and gaining capability and independence is her right. But I refuse to embrace without question the idea that growing up is intrinsically positive, for it can lead to (or come from) the notion that being “grown up” is better than being “a kid.” I equally refuse to endorse the glamorization of independence at the expense of relationship and its necessary trust and dependency. Goodbyes are rarely easy, but I do not want to ease the sting by idealizing the future at the expense of belittling the past.
So I suppose the best way to handle all of these anxieties and frustrations is to try, as much as I can, to change my resignation into calm acceptance. If I don’t want to give into the “big kid” is better than “little kid” idea, if I don’t want to increase anxiety about public school, if I don’t want to exacerbate the difficulties of early hours, I should treat tomorrow as a special but not overblown occasion. It is, like the first day of Spring, a bit arbitrary after all, and it does not mean that winter ceases automatically. It is also a day to be celebrated in the full sense of time. I love my daughter in the past, present, and future. I love her, through memory, as a newborn, held for the first time in my exhausted, exuberant arms, as a toddler, holding my hand for her first few steps, as a preschooler, running around the playground with her first friends. Those memories will not leave me tomorrow. I love her, through imagination, as a potential artist, dancer, writer, scientist, graduate, professional, mother. That imagination has existed since before she was born, and it will exist beyond tomorrow. I love her now, through my senses and consciousness, for exactly what she is in this moment--my girl, full of life and high beauty. I have loved her thus in every moment, and I will love her thus tomorrow.
Am I ready for this? No.
Is it happening? Barring apocalypse, yes.
It’s hard to say exactly how I feel about this milestone because I have avoided indulging or examining my feelings too much. I spend most of the time facing it with something like controlled resignation, but then, at other times, I become quickly emotional...like when I got weepy at church this morning, the theme of which was change and transition. Life is full of seasons, the pastor reminded us, and every disruption is an opportunity. That is true, of course, but it still hurts.
Of all of my feelings, I cannot say that I am happy. I am proud of Lily and confident that she can do very well, but I am not happy to let her go. Some of my reticence is simply pragmatic. We’re not morning people in the Rerecich house, and five days a week of 7:35 start times is going to be rough, to say the least. You might not want to visit us until mid-October at the earliest. It won’t be pretty.
I also have reservations about the public school system. Yes, Matt and I both went through it and came out fine. We even enjoyed elementary school. But much has changed since we were young, and things seem a lot more beaurocratic and intrusive from the parental perspective than they did from my childhood one. I just read the TEKS standards for Kindergarten, and the PDF document was 28 pages long. It should not take 28 pages of legalistic jargon to explain what you want to see a child do after a year in kindergarten. Nor do I think it proper, incidentally, that a kindergarten graduate should understand intellectual property law (section 126.6.5) while she is not yet required to be literate (section 110.11). I must also say that that the school handbook and Michel Foucault’s writings on power and surveillance do not make a happy pairing. Though I try to remind myself that I have friends who are teachers, and that they are understanding, normal people who are not out to usurp my parenthood, the public school system is, unavoidably, a system, and systems can be dehumanizing.
Those worries aside, however, the most emotionally laden aspect of kindergarten is its symbolic significance as the end of early childhood. Being happy or excited about kindergarten seems to mean being excited to say goodbye to Lily’s toddler and preschool years, which I have cherished as unmistakably the best time of my life so far. It also seems to mean welcoming the decrease of my time and influence in Lily’s life. If her daily routine is a pie chart, my slice of it is about to shrink substantially. Of course I do not want to stop Lily from growing up, and I do not want to hamper her individuality and potential. Growing up and gaining capability and independence is her right. But I refuse to embrace without question the idea that growing up is intrinsically positive, for it can lead to (or come from) the notion that being “grown up” is better than being “a kid.” I equally refuse to endorse the glamorization of independence at the expense of relationship and its necessary trust and dependency. Goodbyes are rarely easy, but I do not want to ease the sting by idealizing the future at the expense of belittling the past.
So I suppose the best way to handle all of these anxieties and frustrations is to try, as much as I can, to change my resignation into calm acceptance. If I don’t want to give into the “big kid” is better than “little kid” idea, if I don’t want to increase anxiety about public school, if I don’t want to exacerbate the difficulties of early hours, I should treat tomorrow as a special but not overblown occasion. It is, like the first day of Spring, a bit arbitrary after all, and it does not mean that winter ceases automatically. It is also a day to be celebrated in the full sense of time. I love my daughter in the past, present, and future. I love her, through memory, as a newborn, held for the first time in my exhausted, exuberant arms, as a toddler, holding my hand for her first few steps, as a preschooler, running around the playground with her first friends. Those memories will not leave me tomorrow. I love her, through imagination, as a potential artist, dancer, writer, scientist, graduate, professional, mother. That imagination has existed since before she was born, and it will exist beyond tomorrow. I love her now, through my senses and consciousness, for exactly what she is in this moment--my girl, full of life and high beauty. I have loved her thus in every moment, and I will love her thus tomorrow.
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