How Many First Days Of School Are There

Ask me to provide you with a theme song for parenting and there are moments where I will struggle to choose between O Fortuna by Carl Orff

and the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky.

Those two bring a sort of silly and serious vibe that moves me and ties into A Father Describes Parenting.

I have been thinking about the whole parenting gig quite a bit lately because of the changes that are coming in our world.

With a bit of luck and a lot of hard work I’ll have a new job soon and there is a substantial chance it will be out of state.

It is exciting and I am hopeful but like many parents I have some concerns about how long it will take my kids to adapt.

My best guess is they might settle down sooner because they’ll go to new schools and make a slew of new friends.  I don’t expect that to happen to me and not because I am not going to be starting a new school.

It is a bit more complicated when you are a grownup to find and make new friends not the least of which is I don’t feel much of a need to do so.

I am very lucky and have been blessed with some great friends. Since we have all been out of college for decades now many of us have moved around so it is not new to me to have friends…elsewhere.

Still if the move happens it will be nice to have some local friends so I’ll make a point to work on that.

How Many First Days Of School Are There

Regardless of whether we move or not the children are going to be starting new schools in the Fall.

High School and Middle school–just blows me away to think they are that old already.

Three years ago I wrote about some of this in High Anxiety & The First Day of School but today I find myself reading the post I wrote about my oldest’s first day at school.

I am including the whole thing here for both your and my review. I

t is a prime example to me about one of the things I love best about blogging.

It is a snapshot of a moment in time written by a man who sounds so much younger than I feel now and a reminder to me about how fast this parenting thing really goes.

My Son’s First Day of School

The grand adventure begins tomorrow, or perhaps I should say that it continues. My eldest is heading off to kindergarten.

After much stress and debate we decided to send him to day school. I don’t know who is more excited, him or me.

We spent a big chunk of the day at my folk’s house where we enjoyed a fabulous Labor Day barbecue and talked about what it is going to be like to be in kindergarten.

I told him a little bit about my experience and related how it was way back in kindergarten that I met G.

In a corner of the living room my father, grandfather and I shared stories about what school was like for us.

The kindergarten classes of 1919, 1948 and 1974 recounted tales that in some ways will not be so different from the class of 2006.

In some ways it was rather surreal how some things never change. I began school a relatively short time before the end of the Vietnam War.

My father was a few short years after WWII and my grandfather started during WWI. Not a very impressive comment about people, is it.

Anyhoo……….

We spent a little time getting his school supplies together. There were new kippot to buy, a new backpack, some pants, shirts, a couple of books and some assorted odds and ends.

And throughout all of this there was this little smile on his face and a look in his eyes that made it clear that he is aware that this is a big event.

I suspect that tomorrow is going to be hard for me. He is so very big now. I used to carry this little boy tucked into the nook of my arm. I could hold him and pretend to be the Heisman Trophy. But not anymore.

From time to time he still falls asleep in the car and I still get the chance to carry him in to bed.

Only now when I hold him I feel his feet dangling against the middle of my legs and at 45 pounds he has metamorphed from a light package to something more challenging.

Now on the odd occasions that I have more than a five minute walk from the car to the bed I begin to notice the extra weight.

The baby talk disappeared ages ago. He still makes the occasional mistake. The other day he said that he wanted to be the betterest but the big guy doesn’t ever call me da da anymore.

He doesn’t always want to crawl into my lap to play with his toys. Oh, he’ll still do it from time to time but I see the impact of the older brothers and sisters of his friends and I see him weighing things.

He is more cautious about doing things that mark him as being a baby.

Tonight as he lay down to go to sleep he asked me if Grandpa S. knew that he was going to start school. I said that I thought so and he told me that he missed him and I said that I did too.

And then he told me that he loved me and asked if I thought that my daddy missed his daddy.

He is really starting to understand it all. He gets that grandpa is not coming back.

He told me that he wished that Grandpa was still here because when he learns how to read he wants to read him a story.

I was happy that it was dark because that caught me off guard. My grandfather would have so very much loved to have heard that.

Well, I have rambled and muttered enough. Hold onto your loved ones and hug them tight because time has a way of moving all too quickly.

In a few short hours my little man will walk into class and I’ll head off to work.

If I pass you in the parking lot you’ll forgive me if I don’t look up or say goodbye because I think that even though it is a happy day it is going to be a hard moment.

I read this again and again and smile because I remember it all but at the same time it feels like a different lifetime.

Probably it was and so many of the things I wondered and sometimes worried about happened or didn’t.

In some ways it doesn’t matter because these words you are reading now are proof we all survived and a pretty good indication we’ll continue to do so.

• Saved: Children