Around this time in 2003 we started going to Downtown Elementary School. (This is how parents talk: “We” go to Richland Elementary or White Station Middle or Downtown Elementary. I haven’t sat in a formal classroom setting since the late 1980s, but no matter; at some point it just becomes simpler to explain our kids’ activities as a collective.)

Nine years ago we began school when I dropped my oldest son, Calvin, off for kindergarten. I’d been taking him to day care every single day for years and it had not gone well. Those mornings were full of screaming and clinging and pleading and teeth gnashing, by the both of us. I had little hope that day one of kindergarten would be much better.

But something happened that day and I don’t even know if it was him or me or his new teacher, Mrs. Porter, but I got lucky. She and I stood talking for longer than normal due, no doubt, to my need for reassurance. The point came when Calvin seemed to grow so tired of standing around listening to us with his oversized backpack and overwhelming curiosity weighing him down that he wandered off by himself to find his assigned seat. There were no tears and only a wave of his hand in farewell. Thus began his educational career.

That little boy who surprised me that day with his courage and initiative and impatience with long-winded adults will walk into his first day of high school next week. I won’t be there with him because that’s just not how it’s done at this stage and age. There will be no reassurance from his teacher (for me), no handholding, no oversized backpack. All I can hope is that we’ve done a good job through these first nine years of school, that he’s taken to heart the lessons taught by Mrs. Porter and Mr. Scott and Mrs. Erskine and Mrs. Brenneman, and all of the other wonderful teachers who have influenced and guided him over the years.

I try not to write too much about my 14-year-old here; he deserves his privacy. It’s a shame too, because in that hour he’s not sleeping or eating, he’s really quite engaging and funny. But this milestone deserves mention as it is a momentous occasion for our collective, it’s the next big adventure in parenting.

As a student at White Station High School, Calvin will be dealing with a workload he has never known; with the constant reminder that every test, every grade, every club joined will have bearing on his college career and then his eventual career. Mixed in with that, there will be peer pressure and driving permits and proms and the whole high school caste system to negotiate. He will face growing pains unlike those that have propelled him to his nearly 6-feet tall.

It’s a time I wouldn’t wish on anyone, and yet I’m willingly sending my child into that roiling, bubbling gumbo of uncertainty.

We begin high school next week. Wish us well.

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