Graceful Parenting in Austin

Written by Blue Eyes

I have a vivid memory of the day Noel started her first day of kindergarten. She was five years old at the time and beginning her first year at Gullett Elementary. That morning Carol and I took her to a special breakfast at Kerbey Lane and tried making a big deal out of what we thought was a pretty momentous moment in a person’s life - starting school.

Of course, Noel probably didn’t think too much about it. I mean what’s the big deal? She’d already spent most of her young childhood at various daycares and Montessori schools. This was just another version of that, right? But for us, it was huge. Starting school is a coming of age moment where the little baby you’ve been raising is moving on to something else. It’s when you get to buy their first backpack and fill it with all these great pencils and crayons and paper. It’s the dividing line between the baby you’ve been raising and the kid you’ve been waiting to meet. It’s the beginning of a new journey that has you as curious as you are scared.

When we took Noel to school that morning we walked her to class and watched as this enormous backpack with skinny legs and arms made its way into the classroom. I’m pretty certain the backpack was empty, save a few necessities like her favorite blanket and doll for nap time, but it consumed her and honestly it wasn’t so much of what was in it that made the backpack memorable, it was all the thoughts of what might eventually be put into it.

Noel celebrated her 12th birthday yesterday and we started the day off with a special breakfast at Kerbey Lane. A new journey has begun and the division between the little kid we’ve been raising and the young adult I’ve been waiting to meet has been reached. She’s in her first year of middle school and is in the beginning stages of all the things pre-pubescent. I won’t go into them here (after all she reads this blog and would absolutely kill me), but needless to say some of the changes are visible and some not so visible. She’s added words like “hot” to her vocabulary. As in, man that Brad Pitt is “hot”. Oy vey!

I’m as proud of her today as I was the morning she was born, or the morning when we dropped her off for her first day of school, or the time she joined the softball team, or swam her first lap in the pool. Indeed the journey is everything.

I wonder what she’ll put in her bag now?