First Day, Fifth Grade

Biggy, pretty much boohooing about how this was the last first day of elementary school, the first day of fifth grade, the first day of the last grade before middle school...got up extra early to make the instant pancakes, as always, which were not appreciated as much as they once were. Nor were the perfunctory snapshots for our cranky youngest child. The dogs, however, were as excited as ever to get to the bus stop.

First Day, Fourth Grade

Sadie Blue came in yesterday to go to Six Flags with Biggy, Lola, and Jack, and to see Lo off to school this morning. This was the fastest summer ever.

First Day of Third Grade

The tradition endures:


Biggy makes the pancakes.



Lola eats the pancakes.



Pose for a quick pic in the white undershirt.



To the bus.

First Day, Second Grade

September, The First Day Of School
by Howard Nemerov

I

My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.

Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visible

Bow down before it, as in Joseph's dream
The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down
Before the dreaming of a little boy.
That dream got him such hatred of his brothers
As cost the greater part of life to mend,
And yet great kindness came of it in the end.

II

A school is where they grind the grain of thought,
And grind the children who must mind the thought.
It may be those two grindings are but one,
As from the alphabet come Shakespeare's Plays,
As from the integers comes Euler's Law,
As from the whole, inseperably, the lives,

The shrunken lives that have not been set free
By law or by poetic phantasy.
But may they be. My child has disappeared
Behind the schoolroom door. And should I live
To see his coming forth, a life away,
I know my hope, but do not know its form

Nor hope to know it. May the fathers he finds
Among his teachers have a care of him
More than his father could. How that will look
I do not know, I do not need to know.
Even our tears belong to ritual.
But may great kindness come of it in the end.

Bow To The Big Yellow Bus

Today, I'm celebrating the start of a new school year. What kind of miracle is it that my kids disappear each morning to be entertained--taught even!--by the someones whose sole job it is to lead, supervise, and discipline them ALL DAY LONG. Hooray for teachers! Hooray for the monstrous brick buildings! Let's hear it for the principals with their ugly tie tacks, the lunchroom ladies with their little hairnets, and the custodians with their muddy mop buckets!


Georgia got up extra early to make the chocolate chip pancake batter so Biggy could make Lo's breakfast. Nice teamwork.




For their LAST first day of high school, the senior girls wear black dresses and attend a special breakfast of their own. Here's mine and Biggy's conversation this morning concerning the event:

TR: Apparently, some of the moms are going over to the breakfast to take pictures.

Biggy: Who has time for that?

TR: I'm guessing those moms don't have six-year-olds AND seventeen-year-olds.

Biggy: They don't have jobs either, because their husbands are loaded.

TR: True. I'm going to try not to feel guilty.

Biggy: I'm just glad it's free.




Our first-grader. Biggy tries not to cry.




We couldn't find her a bigger book bag.



Look how excited JackMan is about his first day of high school.