pomp and circumstance

Our elder lad is a preschool graduate.  While we didn't tell him to "get a job", like my father told me mostly in jest (but partly in earnest; he knew I was working on it) when I graduated from college, the milestone is noteworthy as a sort of punctuation in a continuing journey. God willing, it is the first of several such school-year-ending ceremonies.  

Donning white cap and gown, he and his schoolmates marched single file into the school gym to the tune of Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance (Check him out if all you know of his output is the graduation tune.  His music is expansive, evocative of his homeland the English countryside, and informed by his Catholic faith).   They presented a brief but well-rehearsed and age-appropriate program showing off a year's worth of hard work and the development of an obvious camaraderie among them.  Afterward, they dutifully posed for pictures, then flung off their caps and gowns for some large motor skill time running around the gym (their indoor recess place, after all).

The first few days of preschool were fraught with emotion for all of us.  It was a very difficult decision to enroll him in preschool, us having always been together and already collaborating with a group of families in a preschool co-op.  The experience has proven to be a positive one overall, thankfully.  He was blessed with a loving, devoted, and thoughtful teacher and a bevy of caring staff and administration at the school.  The pastor of the parish preschool was one of five presiding at our wedding, and he made regular visits to the school both on regular days and for special events like the Christmas program and today's ceremony.

As we turn our attention to kindergarten next year at a new parish school, I expect we might go through a similar emotional experience to that which we knew at the beginning of this school year now ended.  The element of complete unknown that was part of the beginning of preschool will be (mercifully) absent -- or maybe lessened -- but there will nonetheless be that dimension of not knowing what to expect.  There is also the sadness of saying good-bye to friends the elder lad made this year; none of them will be attending the school in which he is enrolled.

He is looking forward to kindergarten, having been positively beaming on the visits we made to the school we have chosen.  It will mark the opening of a new season in our family life, one I'm glad we have a few months yet to start.