Dad on Duty #88

It’s the beginning of the end.

I know that sounds awful, and gloomy.  But it’s how I feel.

Today we start 5th grade.  Our last year of elementary school.  Our last year at McCoy.

And the last year of real childhood.

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A few days ago, we unplugged the baby monitor, finally, after 11 years.  Tori actually initiated it.  She was ready.

It was a pretty good monitor, with video and even night vision, and you could talk both ways.  I really felt it’s absence last night, after putting her to bed the night before her first day of the last year.  I am so accustomed to being able to glance at the monitor and see if she’s settling in, going to sleep, or restlessly engaging her insomnia.  I was worried about it last night, for obvious reasons.  Right as I was thinking that, Amy walks by and says “of all the nights we needed that damn monitor….”  So she sneaks upstairs to do a direct observation.

But I could not check.  I couldn’t see or hear her.  I just had to leave her to her own to find her way to sleep. An apt analogy for the coming years.

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On the other hand, I have to say, I am enjoying her more and more now.  She is funny and witty.  We can talk about pretty interesting stuff now.  She’s much easier to get along with now than she was when she was four.

She’s 5 feet tall and 100 lbs now.  So I let her sit in the front seat most of the time when we go somewhere.  And we talk about cool topics, and pick out songs on the radio, and critique cars that go by.

Sitting side by side.

I do like that.  And so does she.

But I am now missing the little kid days.  Sometimes when I’m on a work trip, I’ll see a dad standing guard over his 3 year old girl who is having to use the men’s bathroom at the airport….and I remember that so very well.  And I miss it, strangely.  It was difficult and exasperating, but I also felt so needed, and I had such an important mission, when she was little.

I realize I still do, have an important mission.  But I was *really* good at that little kid stuff.  Really good.  And now I feel like I didn’t get to do it quite enough.

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We arrive at school, for the first day of the last year.  We tried to get there early, but so did every other parent in the entire school.  So the car line was backed up all the way out to the main road.  We are just barely on time.

Mommy and I walk her up to class.  We take the required photos

Surprisingly, nobody cries.  But I have a big lump in my throat.

The first day of kindergarten was tough, but it was because I was afraid that she was afraid.  I was upset that she would be upset.

Today, it’s equally tough, but not for those reasons.  Today, I’m just sad.

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Tori likes her teacher, and there are kids in her class that she likes and gets along with well.

But unlike previous years, she’s not really happy.  Her four really good friends are all in other home rooms, and they will only see each other at lunch and recess.

That eats on me much more than it should.  It’s not my job to ensure her happiness, and this experience is both perfectly tolerable and much more in line with real life as she moves into the grownup world.

I can tell myself that, but somehow it’s not working.

I think she’ll develop a strong relationship with this new teacher, and she will begin really enjoying the friends she does have in class.

I think.

In the meantime, even though I know it shouldn’t, it weighs on me.

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The biggest challenge on the first day of school is typically the kindergarteners.  They don’t know where to go, they don’t know to which class they belong, they are overwhelmed and often pretty emotional.

We also have two teachers in kinder that are new to that grade level.  Both are experienced teachers, but with bigger kids.  This little kid stuff might be bumpy for them.

To add to the potential disaster, we added additional special education kids and some kids in a behavior intervention program, along with several new staff members for those kids.

But, unlike every other first day of school over the past five years, we had…..well…..no problems.

Nobody melted down and had to be dragged into class or to the office.  We didn’t misplace any kids.  Not one kinder scholar had to be consoled in the hallway.

It went really well.

I’m suspicious that they sprayed something in the air vents.  There’s really no other explanation.

Or maybe these folks know what they’re doing.

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The only real challenge all day was dismissal.  On the first day, it’s always a little rough.  But today broke the record for number of kids who went the wrong direction.

We prepped as best we could; teachers reviewed the procedure with the kids, we had plenty of manpower on line and we even started a little early.  All the avenues were color coded.

Despite all that, we lost, approximately, 15 kids.  Well, don’t panic….we didn’t “lose” them.  They were somewhere, safe.  But, we didn’t know where.

And when a mom pulls up in car line, and you can’t produce her kid…..well, it’s not good.

My typical M.O. for dismissal is that I write the names of kids I need to find on my hand.  That’s my super sophisticated process.  It is usually about two.  Two kids.  So my hand is a perfectly adequate substrate for the function.

Today, I completely ran out of palm space.  I can’t even read what I’ve written, because they overlap.

Me and about 6 other people are yelling at Deb and Rosie to find this kid and that kid.  All at the same time.  Check the bus log.  Page overhead.  Did his mom call you?  Is she supposed to go on the Primrose bus?

Individual kids are also tugging at our shirt tails, telling us that their sister is here to get them, so they’re going to the tree walker spot instead of the car line.  Hang The Hell On….I have no idea if that’s true, and one of us must lay eyes on this purported “sister” of yours…..

Twice….not once, but twice…..I pass the Boss in a full sprint (both of us), going opposite directions, shouting names of kids we need to find.

It’s 11 minutes of enormous intensity.

Finally, of course, it’s over.  And it’s just fine.  Every kid got home safely.  Because that’s what we do, and we’re pretty damn good at it.

It may not always look like it, but we got this.