To my daughter:
Dear Caroline,
Starting school this year will be hard for you, maybe harder than any time since you started pre-school.
Then, you were just 3fi, not much more than a toddler. You didn’t cry the first day we left you there, but you did every day after that, every day until, oddly enough, a beautiful Tuesday morning that we will always remember as 9/11.
Soon enough, you came to love your teachers and your classmates, and you found you were good at school. In a few short years, you grew from a tiny child easily overwhelmed by too much activity, too much noise or too many people to a confident little girl who likes to lead the way.
Last year, when the first day of school came, you ditched us at the schoolyard gate, running ahead to catch up with your friends.
This year, the schoolyard is different. The classmates are different, the teachers are different and the routine will be different. As we shop for school supplies and talk about bed times and alarm clocks, I can see the anxiety in the way you twist your hair and say “Mom!” with a tone of exasperation I didn’t expect from a soon-to-be second grader.
But I also see the excitement in your eyes as you look forward to a new adventure, new friends, new activities, new challenges.
I wouldn’t have chosen for your school to be among those to close, and I share your sadness that it did. But I trust that you will thrive at your new school.
You have many gifts that will serve you well, in learning and in making friends.
You have a solid academic foundation to build on, and plenty of skills with which to do it. You observe the world around you with the eyes of a scientist. You are sensitive to the feelings of other people as well as your own, and you have a generous, giving nature. You are patient when people around you make mistakes, even when your own missteps upset you. When you fall down, you get back up and try again.
Your imagination means you are rarely truly bored—even though you complain that you are sometimes—and lets you put yourself in the place of other people, and in other places that you’ve never seen.
You like to know what is going to happen: where we will go, what time we will leave, what it will look like, who will be there and when we will come home.
The only surprises you really like are the kind that really don’t come as a shock; you might not know what’s in your birthday presents, but you know there will be presents. That makes new things, new people and places, more challenging for you, because they are unpredictable and don’t always act as you imagine they should.
You experience your feelings intensely, and when you are sad or mad you, and we, know it. But just as often, you are intensely happy, and the joy bubbles out of you in giggles and snippets of songs and gives bounce to your feet as you dance along the sidewalks.
This year, I wish for you to find that joy in your new school and your new friends. I know the transition won’t be easy, but I hope—and expect—that by getting through it, you will come to understand just how strong and resilient you are, and learn that if you can be at home in your own skin, you can be at home anywhere in the world that life takes you.
Love, Mom
Martin is a staff writer for The Catholic New World. She can be reached at [email protected].
Martin is a staff writer for The Catholic New World.
