The First Day of K is Not for the faint of heart

You remember their first steps, their first word, the first time you fed them solid food. You've got pictures, maybe video even. How about the first time you left them in the Kindergarten classroom? That was a tough one -- it was for me at least.

There we were: myself, Mom, and our five year old. What you notice first about the classroom is the tables that will serve as desks for the students. They are down so low the edge could bark your shin. On this first day of class the tabletops are covered completely in construction paper onto which someone, the teacher or her Educational Assistant, I presume, has carefully written the students' names in crayon. Hundreds of loose Crayolas are strewn about the tabletops, sprinkled around in a multicolored, artfully arranged chaos.

In the room are about 40 of us, counting parents and little ones. The teacher and her EA are just gorgeous -- beaming smiles, nodding reassurances. They are prepared for anything. They've seen this all before and know how it comes out in the end. As for the rest of us, I swear I can hear the sound of hearts fluttering.

Before very long the tables are becoming festooned with elaborate illuminations made of their names by the brand new students, and it is nearly time to go. Some of the parents are already filtering out, drifting toward the door, then bolting once they've cleared the line of sight between themselves and their child. The moment of truth is upon us.

But this was not the Union Memorial Preschool, a large house attached to a church with a bona-fide white picket fence surrounding the playground, where it seemed we were leaving our baby with a slew of his aunties every day. No, this was KINDERGARTEN in a real Elementary School, the official beginning of it all. An institution of learning sanctioned by the town and the state and the federal government. A place where masses of little people were set into motion by ringing bells, forming themselves into single files to proceed through hallways, their ears assailed along the way by the sounds of clanging food trays, basketballs ricocheting off gymnasium walls.

And now it was time for me to walk away and leave my son to fend for himself!

Over there by the cubbies, someone is bawling openly. That's okay little fellow. You are a man after my own heart. I am with you. Some are only sniffling. And who's this guy here? He is wielding his Crayola like Michelangelo, completely absorbed in decorating his name. His mom has already reached the threshold, and he has not deigned to look up. But wait, it is SHE who is openly weeping!

All right, no more putting this off. We don't want to be the very last non-teacher grown ups out of the room. What kind of message would that send? What will it be, bawling, sniffling, or will he wave us off as if we are going to the kitchen to make him a peanut butter sandwich during a Spongebob marathon?

"Mama and me have to go now. I'll be back at 3:30 to collect you." He doesn’t answer. He smiles. But it’s an odd smile -- frozen on his face, too many teeth showing. “Okay,” he says, and nods, and only through an heroic effort manages to hold back the tears. We walk toward the door and against all advice to the contrary I look back one last time. The smile is still frozen in place, the tears still held at bay. “He’s going to be fine,” says his mom. But she's already snapped on sunglasses and I can tell what is going on behind the lenses. “My throat hurts, Rosie,” I tell her.

Three-thirty arrives about five hundred hours later and I am there to receive him as promised. He hasn’t got much to say on the walk home, other than to nod when asked if school was okay and if he had had fun. Once home, though, he surprises me by going directly to a little bin where we keep the construction paper. He grabs a dozen or so sheets and tapes them down on the coffee table, then scrawls along the table's edges all of our names in purple crayon.

We had dinner at those place settings for the whole next week.