The Beatrix Potter books packed up into a satisfyingly compact stack of Salada-size readers, and they sat reproachfully by the front door for a few days before I finally took them down the road to the local childcare centre.
I had been watching them, waiting to come up with a persuasive enough argument to hang onto them for just a bit longer. Possible grandkids? Resale value? My unyielding sentimentality?
Nothing was powerful enough. The little books had been shadowed on my son's shelves for years now; it was time they went and made some other kids happy. (Although not Jemima, not Jemima Puddleduck, the most terrible sitter – she was staying with me, along with the memories of my son's peals of laughter whenever Mr Fox barked at her "look sharp!")
Then it was the turn of my son's Thomas the Tank Engine play table to leave home, and I carried it down the road with the help of a friend, muttering to myself that if my kid ever did give me grandchildren and I had to go out and buy one of these again, I'd kill him. No – I'll go and get this bloody table back.
My son, along with tens of thousands of other Australian kids, is about to formally leave the land of childhood and go to secondary school next week, and this clean-out of many of his kindergarten things felt long overdue. It didn't have to happen now, and to be honest I could play with his Thomas trains until I'm old and grey – but this was a kind of emotional separation he wanted for himself.
What's that saying about having a child being a long series of letting go? This feels like a very big one.
School transitions are a much bigger deal now
I don't think he will mind me telling you that he's nervous. I've heard from my friends that they mostly all are. I've been through this once already with my older stepchildren, and I well remember the night-before nerves (and the mysteriously missing school jumpers on the mornings they just couldn't face another day of a big new school).
A big school and big kids. And the horrors that come with marauding middle-schoolers. (What is it with that age group, the year that almost every private school ships off to the bush so they can be both feral and contained at the same time?)
I don't even remember my high school transition: one school just slipped into the next, my entire grade 6 walking a kilometre further to a new place one summer day.
School transitions are a much bigger deal now, which is why I felt so terribly sorry for the teaching staff of my son's new school on their big transition day. The dolorous school email to parents at the end of the day told the story: Incident at School Transition Day. I can't imagine the number of parents who read that and thought, Oh god, what did my kid do?
Turns out the kids were alright, sort of. In scenes unimagined by anyone, some shirtless guy high on something managed to jump the fence to my son's new school and started grabbing kids and trying to drag them away.
Alarming as this sounds, the reality was more pathetic: a crowded school ground, tons of teachers, one hapless addict: he was rounded up pretty quickly but not before the kids had a pretty spicy story to tell their wide-eyed parents later on, many of whom spent the night wondering if they'd picked the right school.
I felt so bad for the school. Seriously? Of all days? I can just imagine the depth of the sigh from the principal who had to pen that explanatory email.
The precious roles of a teacher
Written on paper, school really does seem like the kind of place where little can be expected to go right: hundreds of pubescent and pre-pubescent kids with no prefrontal cortex development, coming from any and every background, mixing with enthusiastic but overworked teachers seven hours a day. Change a couple of words in that sentence and it sounds like prison.
As the watchful parent of a tween, it becomes more obvious every day how precious and important the instructional and leadership role of a teacher is in the life of a young person, so much that the responsibility of it feels overwhelming, even at this distance.
I feel like lining up at the gate and saluting them as they walk in to start this school year. Either that, or a generous gift card to their local bottle shop.
My son is preparing for this momentous day by talking about it as little as possible, and that makes sense to me.
Out of earshot, I whisper about it on the phone to my friends. They take my calls hiding in cupboards. We'll come out when the coast is clear.
This weekend where to swim, who will win and what happened to male birth control?
Have a safe and happy weekend and here's the news: the Pandemonium Festival is about to hit the east coast, uniting Gen Xers and Boomers, with acts like Blondie, Deep Purple, Placebo and Psychedelic Furs.
So that's all the excuse I need for this utterly perfect piece of music. (Is it some of the greatest drumming ever?) My god I love her.
Go well, all. And kids: I promise you'll find your tribe.