With the Memorial Day holiday weekend behind us, Centennial Beach now open for the season, and with remaining classroom attentiveness fixed somewhere between that of hockey pucks and ham sandwiches, we can conclude one simple fact – another school year is nearly complete. Ready or not.
If you’re like most people, you probably greet that news in one of three ways:
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* “Yay, school’s almost out. I can’t wait to spend more time with my kids, doing all the fun summer stuff we have planned!”
* “Oh no, school’s almost out! I’ve got to figure out fast what to do to keep my kids entertained for the next three months.”
* “I don’t have any school-age kids, but now maybe I can finally get one of them to cut my lawn!”
At our house, we fall somewhere between the first and second, and we’re even getting the oldest to entertain the possibility of the third.
More importantly, the start of this particular summer vacation brings the end of his grade schooling, six years gone in the blink of an eye. How can it be that the boy who only yesterday boarded a bus for the first time is about to start middle school?
We’re reminded of this often, as we’ve told him for years that he could have his own phone when he goes to junior high. Now, every day brings another proposal on which device, what call plan and for how much. To us, that phone will be a necessary evil, a practical requirement as he ventures farther into the world more often, a concession to the fact we’re not allowed to track our children’s movements by having them chipped at birth. To him, it’s an acquisition long overdue, finally putting him in the company of some friends, one up on his little sister and kid brother who still must wait two to four years for phones of their own.
To us, the boy’s completion of grade school marks the end of an era. To him, it’s his big chance to worship more devoutly at the altar of Apple. It’s all a little scary, and not just the fear of further stretching our family data.
District 203 schools finish on Tuesday and District 204 the following Monday, both three days later than originally planned, due to winter’s three pesky snow/cold days. The contentiousness at the time still seems so fresh – should they have school or shouldn’t they? Of course they should! No they shouldn’t! Either way, this school year is now a little longer as a result. Your vacation plans may have been slightly delayed, but our family will savor those few extra days nonetheless.
To put time’s march in perspective, these are the last days our three children will ever spend in the same school, barring extreme high school proficiency/deficiency for the youngest or oldest. My wife gets a little melancholy when she brings this up, a point she thinks is somewhat lost on a guy who attended kindergarten through 12th grade entirely in the same building, and with no siblings there at the time. But I get it.
The cocoon is being stretched, the comforting safety of all three siblings going off to their school adventures together each day is soon to be no more – at once a symbolic end of one thing, and the very real beginning of something else. Cue the mass parental waterworks during the retrospective slideshow of kindergarten pictures at the 5th Grade Breakfast on the last day of school. I remember fretting that first day whether the bus would return him safely – later that morning from a whole half-day! Of course, it did.
We’ll spend this summer camping, and playing baseball and softball, shuttling kids to and from activities and hanging with friends. Long summer days and fun summer nights are among the most enduring memories of our own carefree youth. Our children’s should be no different.
And when it’s done, the boy who comes home from school Tuesday for the last time a phoneless 5th-grader will board a different bus on a different route to a different school as a synced-up 6th grader this fall, connected to his world as never before while still tethered to his parents, as he should be.
When is the right time for a child to have their own phone – if at all – is a question each family must answer for themselves. How quaint the teen lines and party lines of our youth now seem by comparison. That’s nothing like carrying the world in your pocket, anything you want at your fingertips, for better or worse.
If he needs a ride home from the Beach or basketball camp or from a round of golf this summer, that phone will be how he lets us know. And when we wonder how he’s doing, if all is well, if the world is treating him well and he it, that phone will be how he lets us know. We will hope so anyway.
And all he cares about is which model it is.
Guess we’d better start shopping.
Twitter: @RobManker
Rob Manker is a freelance writer who lives, works and parents in Naperville
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