Back to School

With college kids all over DC, and my little nephew becoming a big kindergartener, my mind has wandered to thinking about school. It's now been two full decades since my last "first day" as a high school student. Twenty years sometimes seems like a year and sometimes it seems like decades. It's weird. It is now half of a lifetime ago, and I can't get over that I'm 37 and J and others are just starting their journeys. It is sad, a bit. I imagine what it would be like to have a little boy starting kindergarten, shopping for the backpack and feeling so bittersweet as he got on a school bus and headed off onto a new adventure. I would wonder how his day without me would go, and I would hope that he would make friends and he would like his teacher. And I hope he'd be smart, and he could read and write better than the other kids. And he would come home all excited to see me to tell me about his day, and how I'd be breathlessly awaiting his little stories about his day. It is so bitter, so sweet to anticipate. And so sad, because I don't know if that will happen. At M&N's party on Sunday, I felt so distant not having a baby to talk about, to hold and watch and to share my own stories. It makes me so lonely at times.

Maybe someday that will be me, and I will appreciate it so very much. But for now, all I can do is look forward to hearing the stories and wistfully hope that it will be me someday.