My daughter, Kaiya, is now in grade 5, which makes me feel a lot older than it probably should. It's a weird thing to think about. She's at the point now where her stream of consciousness will now be largely uninterrupted as she is swept downstream towards adulthood. My own memories (unfortunately) reach back with decent accuracy to fourth grade. She's at the point now where her experiences will form an integral part of who she will grow into, which means however much I worried about her before, it isn't nearly enough now. It also means I can't fuck around too much: from now on, any of the multitude of ways I could possibly screw up will now theoretically be the subject of a therapy session some time in the future.
My son, Ronin, is just moving into grade 3 and I can still cling vicariously to his youthful energy a little while longer. He's still in the preliminary phases of starting to figure out who he is. Beyond liking Lego, Pokemon, and Minecraft, his book is pretty much blank, which makes me rather envious. He's far from worrying about what he might want to do with his life, and just wants to hang out with his friends and play Minecraft. (Did I mention my son likes Minecraft?)
Getting ready for school this morning, I felt a lot more redundant than in previous years. My daughter especially is getting a lot more independent. I remember the days when I had to fumble around in the morning pretending I knew anything about doing a young girl's hair and definitely not getting frustrated beyond all human reason as a snap yet another elastic trying to hold a ponytail in place, the devil's hairdo. My son really just needs a little push with breakfast to get the ball rolling. Although, he's at the point where he's starting to care about his how his hair looks, and actually wants to comb it in the morning before he leaves the house. It's kind of crazy having backstage access to the development of two human beings.
By the time I came home, the kids were both worn out and ready to crash. Any excitement had already been burned up to fuel them throughout the day. All I got it response to my inquiries about what they did was the child standard "Nothing." It's hard to summon the energy after a full day of the world trying to beat you down. Hell, one of the oft-unspoken truths about life is that it doesn't get any easier as you get older. And I'm just dad, after all. I'm the guy who gives them piggyback rides or pays for their riding lessons.
For my kids, today marked the end of summer. Back to the daily grind. For me, I saw the page turn on another chapter of their lives of which I'll only ever be able to read bits and pieces. That's OK. They have their own stories to tell, just as I have mine. It's still a little sad though. As a parent, you want to be there through all the triumphs and the tragedies, but the reality is that you just can't be the central focus of somebody else's life, nor should you be.
They had fun with their friends and are getting back into the swing of things, learning the rhythms of new teachers. They won't ruminate about the significance of any of this until years later. That's the way of things. You don't realize how much time is gone until after the fact. They seem to have had a good day, though, so at least the tally of good days to bad seems to still be leaning towards the former. I guess, in the end, that's all you can hope for.
Well, I guess that and to be Batman.
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