Sentimentality Be Damned.

I just dropped my Kindergartner off at school for the last time. The. Last. Time.

At 11:15am today, he will officially be a first grader. (What the!) Bug told his dad this morning, “Bye, Dad! It’s the last time you’ll be saying good-bye to me as a Kindergartner!”

I’m not a sentimental person – not overly, anyway. I have kept a majority of Bug’s kindergarten artwork and math worksheets and journal entries (the ones that weren’t crumpled at the bottom of his tote bag anyway), but I don’t have any qualms about throwing stuff away. I used to be quite the memory-hoard. I used to keep every little memento, from classmates’ notes, to my ninth grade prom corsage. (Maybe practicality as a wife and mom and limited space cured that ailment.) For the most part, sentimentality be damned.

But durgit, I want this year back.

Hubs told him this morning, “You will never, ever, ever be a Kindergartner again!” (Thanks, hon.)

If nothing else, Bug’s educational career is off to a winning start – mostly E’s (for Excellent) in behavior (he’s come home with maybe three or five S’s [for Satisfactory] over the past nine months) and straight E’s on his report card (except in handwriting – he suffered an S in that as well…).

But it seems like fifteen minutes ago we were walking out the door on a hot August day, Bug in his ironed polo shirt (so he could be like Dad), confident and excited and ready to meet new friends. And fifteen minutes from now we’ll be sitting in a stuffy gymnasium (or grassy lawn, weather-permitting) for his high school graduation. (Kleenex, anyone?)

I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but I feel like I need to be properly sentimental about the past year, that if I don’t pause long enough and reflect, it’ll be like standing in a wind tunnel with each day swirling viciously around me like a hurricane. I feel like I’ve failed in properly chronicling his Kindergarten year in a way that he will remember it forever. I think I might have documented photographically three? four? events that happened at school this past year: the Family Night Sock Hop, the Spring Walk-a-Thon,  the end-of-the-year Field Day…there’s a whole lot of meat missing from this sandwich.

I, on the other hand, remember the days in-between – the day he came home with his first S and spent practically the whole day crying, the day he announced his first girlfriend (there were three, actually), the days I showed up for lunch (coincidentally, they were always serving square pizza those days…), and the many, many other days that are only evidenced in my memory, and cannot be condensed into one witty, touching, properly nostalgic blog…

I am a little sad that it’s over, that the newness of being in school for the first time (real school, not day-care school, as Bug put it once) is gone, and that one day, Bug will only remember a tiny handful of the past 300-ish days of Kindergarten snapshots.

But a bigger part of me is excited for the pending months of summer, as Bug transitions from fresh-faced Kindergartner to weathered First Grader, and more importantly, from just my baby boy to my baby boy plus Bean’s big brother.

For a moment though, I thought I’d reflect.

First Day of School:

And to be fair to Bug when he’s an adult, here’s one for the record books. My Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Davis and a few of her Kindergarteners, circa 1988.

(I’m the only black-haired one who looks uncannily like Data from The Goonies. Thanks for pointing that out, Maia.)