He’s truly my son! And that’s Harry Potter 4 he’s reading!

Piñata lane

El Cangri happy on the Barbie scooter

When we went to the Hare Krishna Temple last year

After Dinosaur Park

BFF

I have been dragging myself towards Friday. Each day this week I woke up a little later than the day before; each day I have either given my kids money for school lunch or had to go back to the school to drop off their hot lunch. My spoiled kids! They’re not peaky eaters, but they won’t eat everything you put in front of them. Mystery objects on their plates? Non-attractive presentation? They won’t even touch it. But when I give them a lunch of fish and carrots, salad and oranges, they clap in delight. They like to eat well my darlings. But I digress, my post wasn’t supposed to be about the bittersweet taste of a particular dish, but of the last day of school.
We started Cryfest on Tuesday when my Cangri finished his first year of preschool. He gave Mrs. K. a beautiful bouquet of baby roses and a picture he had made for her. She cried when he hugged her, and I was taking pictures and crying about my baby growing so cruelly fast. Again, and just because it was the last day, I drove to the teacher’s corner (remember she has the school at her house), and I took the Barbie scooter out of the trunk of the car so he could experience going to school on his scooter, as his little friends do. He was ecstatic! But Chubbers cried because she still couldn’t go to preschool. “One more year baby,” I told her, and she calmed down a little, but my throat closed in agony.
And then it was today. The whole week, all kids did at school was play. They celebrated their teacher’s birthday; they had field day; they had a read-a-thon. Fridays is early out day, and they stayed until the regular time. Like I said, I have been getting up later and later each day this week, and today they were LATE! But they still wanted to go to school to say goodbye to their friends and those teachers they love so much!
When I went to pick them up, I dropped off a little bouquet of flowers for their teachers, and Thank You notes that they had left on the counter this morning. I waited outside in the car, and what I saw filled my heart with tenderness. I saw children coming out of school and lingering on the sidewalk, hugging each other and their teachers. Many teachers, including my kids’, were teary eyed. The school secretary kept informing on the intercom that the school needed to be vacated, that everyone needed to exit the building NOW. GO TO YOUR CARS,; YOUR PARENTS ARE WAITING! SUMMER IS HERE!!! Still, we, the parents, waited a long time for our children to say their goodbyes.
Finally, I saw them walking arm in arm to the car. These kids of mine had armfuls of half eaten cupcakes, a million pieces of paper with phone numbers, and they each had a scrapbook that their teachers had made. I just bow in veneration to those wonderful souls who have been such an inspiration for my children.
I opened Swan’s scrapbook, and I saw her happy little face in different pictures at field trips, school parties and activities. The teacher also included Swan’s writing reports, and I could see how my little girl’s writing skills and penmanship improved report after report.
When I opened Gorgeous Boy’s scrapbook and read the words his teachers had written for him, I promised myself that I would see that child, my own son, through the teachers’ eyes more often.
Mrs E wrote:
Mr Josh Groban Jr:
I have seen you serve in silence all year, helping to clean up the classroom, picking up trash in the playground, helping others. You have a very caring personality. I feel blessed to have known you.

Mr W. wrote:
Keep working hard. Keep reading and writing. And please keep me in your mind when you are famous. Thanks for a wonderful year.

I love this stage in my children’s lives. They have such a yearning to learn, to see the world, to be good. Children, don’t grow up. Get bigger and stronger, but don’t lose that which adults fight so hard to gain back.