It doesn't seem remotely possible, but Alison started kindergarten this week. I took the day off from work on Wednesday so that I could go along on her first day, and the entire experience was surreal, to say the least.
When we arrived at school, we joined dozens of other families who were marking the same milestone we were. I held Henry's hand and pushed Kate's stroller as Leslie and Alison walked hand in hand a few steps ahead of me on the sidewalk. For Alison, this was like Christmas. She had been counting down the days for weeks, constantly asking, "How many days until kindergarten?" Now that it was finally here, her excitement had given way to some obvious nervousness.
We waited for two other families to take pictures of their daughters standing in front of the school marquee, and as we stood in the early morning sun, the importance of the day seemed to grab hold of Alison and squeeze just a bit. The picture we finally took of her, standing apprehensively in a front of sign which read, "WELCOME STUDENTS! FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL," shows a scared little girl refusing to smile while tugging nervously at her skirt. People say that my daughter and I look alike, but it's only in moments like this that I see it. With her eyebrows arched in worry, her eyes wide with anticipation, her face brings to mind pictures I have from my first trip to the dentist and my own first day of school.
Moments later we were in the classroom. Henry seemed more excited than his sister as he found a book shaped like a school bus and sat down to read. Alison, on the other hand, was more tentative. She found her spot on the carpet, although she noted her name had been spelled with two L's instead of one, and she noticed a book that we have at home. Her excitement was there, but she kept it below the surface, much the way her father would.
We've enrolled her in a dual-immersion Spanish program, which means that class is conducted in Spanish 90% of the time. Her primary teacher will never speak English in front of the students, so we were a bit concerned that Alison might be a little overwhelmed when greeted with "buenos días" instead of "good morning," but I don't think it was an issue at all. As her teacher led the class in a song (a Spanish version of "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes") I was struck by the fact that this was a scene being played out in kindergarten classrooms across the country. As proud parents stood watching, twenty smiling students mimicked their teacher's actions, unaware that they couldn't understand the words she was singing. A beautiful, beautiful thing.
A few hours later we had lunch for four instead of five, and Leslie and I talked about how amazing it was that our first born had actually started school. I thought about my memories from kindergarten, and thrilled at the idea that Alison would soon be having some of the same experiences. As I remembered how incredibly grown up she had looked that morning in her blue and white school uniform, it wasn't hard to imagine her holding a boy's hand in middle school, dancing at her high school prom, or moving into her college dorm room.
Wow. And all this on her first day of kindergarten...
Dang! You made me cry! :)
Posted by: Leslie | September 09, 2005 at 05:08 PM