It's been a week focused upon beginnings around here. For all four kids, it was the first week of school. That’s right, even Saskia has her own school (she’ll be spending three mornings a week at the wonderful, warm, homey Sunnyside Child Care Center). She started Tuesday morning, and almost instantly has found that Sunnyside’s a pretty terrific place. She loves her teacher, John (famed for how beloved he is to toddlers), or as she calls him, Johnny. I am told she can be heard calling his name in singsong: “Johnny, Johnny, Johnny!” She’s also been logging a little playground time with her favorite three year-old in the world, our friend and neighbor (and younger brother to Remy’s close pal, Gabriel) Noah. When she sees him, she calls out, “No-ah! No-ah!” or sidles up and asks, “What doin’ Noah?” That’s pretty much the extent of what I know about Saskia and Sunnyside: she loves Johnny; she loves Noah. Oh, and she gets very tired from all the action there.
Remy and Lucien started on Wednesday, their elementary school more formally buzzing with the resolve of a new year and glowing with a kind of honeymoon aura (that should end soon enough and real life will settle in). There was such a nice reunion atmosphere between kids and adults alike. Many new families had friends keeping an eye, introducing parents to other parents and the like. One thing I like about both the preschool and the elementary school is that that energy marks the new, rather than much glitz or flash. There weren’t tons of new outfits or new backpacks, even. There weren’t even so many cameras flashing. At noontime (Wednesday, the day they started, is always a half-day), some groups were going out to lunch to celebrate; we, along with a bunch of other people, snacked or picnicked on the playground, our time there culminating in my bringing home three others beyond my two students. What a great first day, to spend time playing with friends (and then, for Lucien, go to his first soccer practice). Ezekiel has orientation on Thursday, classes on Friday. He is comfortable in his middle school scene (Williston, with its busy yet warm middle school). While the others seem newly in it, Ezekiel seems in the middle immediately, perhaps in part, because he is so comfortable in a school setting. He’s just that kid, the learner. I can see PhD being a title he obtains, mostly in order to stay in school that long.
While Lucien is partaking in the school-wide honeymoon, Remy’s bumping a bit more, given the fact that he’s not in Gabriel’s class. The first morning, before we reached our back door, was pretty rough. So was the second. But Friday, he just got up and out. He has the warmest teachers ever, and a classroom filled with great things to do and learn and lovely kids to boot, so I have no doubt he’ll find his honeymoon at his own pace. Remy does static like no other child. The first day, though, at pick-up time, I asked, “How was it?” and he gave a little thumb up and shrugged. “Okay,” he said, with his crooked half-grin, and I knew that, despite his impressive static, first grade is in the bag. For Lucien, the high excitement met with a momentary freeze about his writing abilities Wednesday evening, but he pushed through. I think he’s going to be pushed—and push himself—this year, and come out of the experience feeling really good about himself as a learner. Sitting beside him as he procrastinated, though, I also remembered what hard work getting Lucien to actually doing homework really is (sigh).
However they go, beginnings are very exhausting. All four kids have been tired, and somewhat fragile. We were hoping to go to a party Friday evening, and it was clear that leaving the house close to bedtime—and pushing bedtime later—was ill advised. Beginnings require you to shore up your energies, to learn new names, meet new people, grasp new concepts and meet new expectations. Even once you’ve started new things many times over, started anew before, there may be a sharp learning curve for the next new thing, and new emotions connected to it.
I spent some of Friday and Saturday afternoon offering myself as a set of helping hands at the rehearsal and wedding of our lovely friend and former babysitter, Jessie (she married Nate, a sweet man my kids somehow dubbed affectionately “the big fat hairy gorilla” and when he came over, Jessie, whom they adore, was completely ignored by them in favor of gorilla guy). Jessie put a lot of energy and effort into this wedding, designing the invitation, choosing a dress, bridesmaids’ dresses, and on, all the details. She’s just a year out of college so she and her friends have little wedding experience, and they were giddy (reminiscent, said a couple of their mothers, of the prom a few years beforehand).
For all the giddy and all the ephemeral details—so much effort for just one afternoon—wedding planning isn’t simply a massive hyper-focus to make a perfect party—it’s a chance to channel energies into this new endeavor, marriage. What marriage means is so personal—despite religions’ and poets’ takes alike—but at the core, it’s a leap to the new world of sharing lives together with a commitment to do so having been declared to a larger group (whether you marry in front of one witness or one hundred and twenty five of them). The promise, especially of young people’s marriages, when they are embarking upon living together, too, is all shiny and new and unknown. The enormity might not even sink in while planning the party or going through the ceremony, but over time, it becomes real. For me, it was the first time dear hubby got sick after we got married (we’d been living together for about three years by then): the yarn that was spun from the experience goes that he asked for an English muffin with a scintilla of butter (that’s the part he disputes, scintilla), but I remember the leaden sensation of realizing that I would be dealing with (caring for?) this man’s every illness for the rest of our lives. It sounds trivial, but I truly felt panicked for a moment. He’s less of a Victorian woman needing such specific service (four kids will do that to anyone) and I’m a slightly more accommodating nurse (at times).
Meantime, my nephew, Ian, finally got to go home on Friday, after his ten-day stint in the NICU (the hospital time was a necessity, given his month early entrance into the world), so his parents, Emily and Tom, are experiencing new parenthood, the at-home version. As Emily wrote in a group email to announce his arrival: “This was certainly not the start we pictured to Ian’s life but has also brought us some real gifts. First, love, support, generosity and comic relief from many of you, for which we are incredibly grateful. And second, a chance to even more fully appreciate our beautiful son.” She summed up so beautifully what we can learn from beginnings: they aren’t entirely expected—and then, we grow. And in growing, we appreciate our beginnings and our middles—our lives—that much more.
