Noah: Official Schoolkid

As of August 25, it's official: Noah is now a schoolkid. We are very fortunate to be close enough to a humanities magnet public elementary school to automatically get in. That's because we live in an area that is supposedly unappealing to white, middle income people because non-white and working-class people live in the neighborhood. We like it, because the prejudiced, highfalutin stuffed shirts have indeed moved out to their gated communities, and we don't have to bother with them trying to pass neighborhood regulations about the height of Christmas lawn ornaments. To try to increase the racial and class integration of Durham schools, they've invested a lot into Club Boulevard Elementary school, making it the kind of school that highfalutin stuffed shirt parents compete to get their kid into (the prejudiced highfalutin parents send their kids to private schools, where their little gumdrops don't have to bother with the wrong sort).

Yes, well, where was I? Right. Noah is now officially a schoolkid, and what's interesting is how he is beginning to act like a schoolkid too. The second of school, Noah turned to me and explained that he and his friend Edward played a game in the schoolyard in which the girls were monsters and he and Edward had to run from them, because the monster girls would chase after them, catch them, and kiss them. Noah related this to me with the mixture of earnestness for chase, nominal distaste for girls and underlying attraction to them that is classic elementary school. Is there a gene that activates this? Is it some kind of school culture? I don't know, because I can't be there to see things happen, and for someone who's used to being directly in touch with his son's life that's a bit hard to swallow. I take him to the front door, I get a goodbye hug and kiss, and off he goes. At the end of the school day we walk back home past or through the park and I ask him how things are going, but I get a 6-year-old's answer about 6-year-old things like games at recess, which kid got in trouble, and what was for lunch, not a 34-year-old's answer about the structure of the curriculum or how well Noah is fitting in socially.

That's life, isn't it...getting them started close in, then letting them go and have areas of their lives that don't belong to or even include you any more. Independence! It's what I've wanted for Noah since he was born, but now that it comes to it, I find it hard to let him go. Fortunately, Noah is having the time of his life at school, making it hard to dwell on all those Fiddler-on-the-Roof, Sunrise-Sunset, now-is-my-little-boy-a-bridegroom sorts of things.