SJH: Back to School Edition

One week of kindergarten under our belts. I tell The Missus I look forward to the day Thing One doesn't start crying when I drop him at the classroom door, but secretly I don't.

Thing Two, three years old, follows us down the street as we pull away each morning, yelling good-bye and I’ll miss you and I’ll see you after school. She started pre-school yesterday.


Correspondent Michael Dowding sent the article below. A little Googling reveals it holds great meaning for those who know it and read it every year at this time. I can see why.

Please let me know if you will or will not be playing hoops this Saturday. We tip off at 8:00 a.m., as usual.

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Some great force signals us on this special morning

By Mike Levine
Times Herald-Record
September 5, 2006

I wrote this column a decade ago. Since then, parents have told me it's a way they mark the arrival of September's first school bus. I've added a few lines for today. Here's to a safe and healthy year for all our children.

Quick, before they leave this morning. Take a good look. Touch their faces, run your hands through their hair.

We got antsy with them last month, but now we want time to stand still. Like falling leaves and chilly mornings, some great force signals us today. We are aware of life passing.

See the kindergartner with a brave, bewildered smile watching her mother cry as the school bus pulls away. The high-school freshman with a lump in his throat hears his father whisper everything will be OK. Brothers and sisters who fought all summer now hold hands.

Today is proud, today is helpless, today is tomorrow. This is a special morning, wrenching and sacred.

As a young reporter, I'd wonder why. What's the big deal about the first day of school? I would write down quotes in my notebook and comprehend nothing.

Then I became a parent. I found out. We mark time by today.

On this morning, we remember our own parents and our own childhood. We are filled with the smell of old raincoats, the sticky bond of classroom glue, the childhood knot of worried excitement. We were so small and lost. (Secret: A part of us is still lost. We tell no one.)

Now we have children of our own. On this morning, we remember the holy moment of their birth.

We see this is all just a matter of time. Once, we thought our children were ours alone. Each September, on this day, we learn better. Nothing is ours to keep.

Time passes through our eyes this morning. We see our children as newborns, we picture them as grown-ups. We see them walking their own children to school.

Time passes in the beat of a heart. I have seen my first kindergarten boy walk into his dorm on his first day of college. A few days ago, my younger son left for college. I stood there, at once empty and full, as frightened and proud as the morning his first school bus pulled away.

Come on, it's getting late. The bus is coming up the road. I'll keep this short.

Make sure they have everything they need. Double check. Write their name on the book bag. Sweetheart, did you remember your lunch money? Dad, don't call me mushy stuff in front of the other kids.

They are right. Like the summer birds leaving us, our children know what to do. Like September leaves waving on the trees, we, too, give way to the winds of change.

[Mike Levine was the Executive Editor and former columnist of the Times Herald–Record in upstate New York. He died suddenly on 14 January 2007, at age 54. His column about the first day of school was reprinted this year, as it has been every year since he wrote it.—SPY]