Mary had the idea of asking a bunch of friends to write down how their first day of kindergarten went. (See August 28 entry below.) Rachel came up with this. (Very lightly edited by me.) Thanks, Rachel.
I woke up and went to Jerry’s bed (now there’s a switch) when I heard him rustle. He said, “What are you doing here? Why are you up?” I wanted to tell him that I was up because this was the morning of his first day of kindergarten and it was a very special and important day and I wanted to look at him long and hard and see his face and remember it forever and hoped he was OK at school and tell him I’d be thinking of him every minute for six hours while he was gone. Instead, I said, “I don’t know. I just woke up and thought I’d come in.”Tony got up a few minutes later and called, “Jerry, want to shave with me?” I’d heard this before, but I figured it meant that Jerry would hang around in the bathroom and keep Tony company while he did his apres-shower grooming. Jerry said, “Bye, Mom. I have to shave with Dad now,” and he went into the bathroom. I heard their voices from the bathroom and went back in our room to get my slippers and a sweatshirt. I decided to go down stairs to make the coffee, but I took a peek into the bathroom before I went down. What I saw: a slim yet muscled boy (a tuft of independent hair sticking straight up from the crown of his head) wearing white Jockey boxers, and a man, with not much hair on his head but the very familiar shape of his appealing form, in his white Jockey boxers. Both stood facing the large mirror, faces at approximately the same height, Jerry on the stool, Tony on the floor. Both left hands assisted, both right hands moved shavers, making tracks in the shave cream mask on their faces. Though their backs were to me and they didn’t notice me, I could see both faces in the mirror. The only difference, as they stood focusing on the serious task at hand, was the shaving cream on Jerry’s forehead (Tony’s forehead was free of cream) and the cover on Jerry’s blade. Neither of them spoke. The act had the easy rhythm of a comfortable ritual performed many times before.It was a shared moment that I could have broken with a comment. I slipped downstairs undetected and realized how little he, the stealer of my heart, the whirling dervish, the origin of so many of my grins and laughter lately, my five year old boy, needed me. I could never shave with him. I was profoundly glad that Jerry had a dad, had this Dad.When Tony and I walked Jerry to school that morning, and left him in the assembly outside standing with classmates in little lines behind respective teachers like ducklings behind mother ducks, it was Tony whose eye got wet at the letting go of him. Tony and Jerry hugged and his line started moving towards the school. We waved good-bye and watched him and the other kindergarteners file orderly into the big old building, class by class.When I saw Tony’s tears, I realized I’d been saying good-bye to Jerry for a long time, three years every morning as I dropped him off at preschool. Tony and Jerry were separated again, like other mornings, but this time, the mark of kindergarten lent a formality and overtness in the departure that it lacked on other days. The growing up of him and the letting go of us was painful for both of us. To Jerry the new day seemed like any other new thing he experiences in his little life. Everything is new. And all of it is taken in stride. Not so for the grownups. A new beginning, again. — Rachel
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