Kindergarten
Today started my oldest’s third week of kindergarten, and we didn’t really take a traditional 1st-Day-of-Kindergarten picture. And there’s a reason.
That morning, before we left, Wilder wouldn’t pose for a picture. He flat-out refused. He really doesn’t like to have his picture taken unless he’s showing me something (Take a picture of this butterfly, Mama! Or Hey! Mama! Take a picture of me in this tree!) He did not (and rarely does not) want me to take a picture of him posing for anything. And that morning I didn’t make him, because I know the Wild Man, and that morning he was terrified.
He was acting tough in his new school clothes that he had picked out, wearing clothes with sizes that no longer ended in ‘T’ and were now covered in big boy sports imagery instead of smiling dinosaurs. He was too cool with his new Pac Man backpack, with his packed-for-the-first-time Pac Man lunchbox, with the cool hemp-and-clay-mushroom-necklace-from-the-90s he had found in one of his daddy’s memorabilia boxes and now proudly used to accessorize his mostly-matching clothes. We had talked all year about what to expect in kindergarten, about how fun it was all going to be, and he was bubbling with excitement all summer, telling everyone how he was starting kindergarten soon.
Now, in that moment heading towards school, he was acting tough, but I could tell by the way he was chewing at his right thumbnail that he was worried. Because here’s the thing about Wilder, and there wasn’t anything I could do to change it for him that morning: Wilder likes to try things for the first time by himself, with an opportunity to practice and fail without an audience, without anyone seeing a mistake. Trying a cartwheel, or playing the ukulele, jumping off the diving board, hitting a baseball, or even wearing a new outfit. He wants to do it by himself first, to decide for himself. He makes measured decisions, considers all the ‘what-ifs,’ and (as a true child of the pandemic), he is a bit of a worrier. He is one of the bravest people that I know, but his bravery always comes from careful consideration and planning, and being afforded the opportunity to try it his way, in his time. He has always been this way, and it’s never mattered really until now. We knew there was no way to practice the first day of school, that he was just going to have to walk right through those doors and suddenly be a kindergartener, and there wasn’t anything Jimmy or I could show him or tell him that would let him experience any of it before this moment. He had excitedly jabbered the whole way, gnawing at his right thumbnail and saying several times “I’m not scared at all!” mostly just to hear himself say the words so that he could do his best to believe them as we neared the school. I understood because I was saying them silently to myself. “I’m not scared at all.” “I’m not scared at all.”
When we arrived and parked and I opened his car door, he squeezed my hand, hard, and whispered, “I’m very scared, Mama.” And I whispered back, “Me too,” mustering everything inside myself to smile as I said it instead of crying like I wanted to. He was scared about making new friends, and where to find the bathroom, and what the food would taste like, and if his backpack was cool enough, and I was terrified about everything else in the world, about every news headline, about him learning to hide in his classroom during intruder drills, about what someone might bring from home in their backpack, about what other kids would teach him on the playground, about what he would learn and find out and experience that I could no longer control, or prevent, or make better. The world was no longer just about frogs, or late breakfasts, or lightning bugs, or our safe little place at home. The timer had gone out on our pre-school days, and now it was bigger, and scarier, for us all.
But I hugged him, hard, and said, “You are amazing, and wonderful, and I can’t wait to hear about everything!” And then he just smiled and hugged me, hard, and turned and started walking towards the school beside Jimmy, arms swinging with confidence, not pausing again for a moment, facing whatever he wasn’t given the opportunity to practice, that awful and wonderful thing called the real world.
And that’s what I took a picture of that morning on his first day of school. My sweet baby Wild Man being braver than I had ever seen him before, and knowing that he was going to be just fine. He would make friends, and find the bathroom, and love the food, and be wearing exactly what he should be. But me? Well, there’s no nail left on my right thumb.
