It Was A Very Good Year

Six years ago today—it was Labor Day that year, too—The Missus and I became parents.

That first year convinced us to put off trying again indefinitely. It wasn’t any one catastrophic thing, rather a cascading series of events and issues that, cumulatively, argued too compellingly that our circumstances did not allow for enlarging the family at that time.

Today, my back is too shot and we’re too poor. And we’re twice as far away from the support of family and friends than we were when we had The Boy.

Did I mention it’s his birthday today?

Man, five was a good year. Five was great.

Five was finally taking command of his language skills, and usually producing at least a howler or two every day. Here’s one from earlier this week: We’re working together at the crafts table. I jump up with a new treasure and tell him I need to scan it right away. As I head for my office, I stop in the kitchen for a swig of chocolate milk. I notice the pastries left over from the weekend and remember they’re either expired or about to expire. I pull off a paper towel and set it down and start to look for a knife. Knowing full well how easily I am blown off track when I’m not concentrating, The Boy asks innocently from the crafts table, “Are you scanning it with a paper towel?”

Five was learning how to swim. Five was me accepting that my little boy would never have to cling to me for dear life in the pool again.

Five was learning to play chess, and catch, and ride a bike; to varying degrees of success.

Five was virtually the end of out-of-control displays of temper, and the beginning of being able to reason with him, and hold him to account for his own actions.

Five was the last year I had the luxury of keeping him home from (pre)school every Thursday, and just hanging out with him. Running errands, going to the pool, watching superhero cartoons, enjoying fast-food lunches that launched my cholesterol numbers into the stratosphere…

I’m having a hard time letting go of five.

He turns six on the fifth, and starts Kindergarten on the sixth. Just like that, in 24 hours, he’s going to be a six-year-old and a Kindergartner. Our five-year-old will be consigned to the realm of digital scrapbooks and fond memories, and the rebellious teenager-to-come will be that much closer to making his debut.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give for another year of five-years-old. He’s been home these last three weeks, alone with me and the dog as The Missus’ professoring job started in mid-August. Best three weeks of the year so far, hands-down. I haven’t had a lick of personal time or accomplished a single thing other than random, late night blog posts, and I can’t remember ever having enjoyed a stretch of unproductive time so much.

The last few weeks have been a mitzvah. I explained to him at the onset that when he starts Kindergarten, our Thursdays together were going to be gone. We should try to make the most of this window in time as it was almost completely closed.

And he got it. He didn’t seem to actually care too much, but he also remained stoic through his beloved Great-Grandmother’s recent passing. In some ways he’s very much a six-year-old, and that too is a mitzvah.

So we maximized our time together. I put everything else aside and just concentrated on inculcating myself into his world. I played games with him I’d never played before, did activities, crafts even, went places—that’s how we ended up at the Day-Glo, 3D, indoor miniature golf place around here last Friday.… he was so clear on the closing-of-a-chapter concept that he’s used it a couple times in the last few days to nudge me into agreeing to whatever he was proposing.

He knew I cared, and that was enough for me.

Losing him to six-years-old and Kindergarten in the same week is going to be rough. I’m taking steps, measures, making sure my days stay busy that first week. Introspection will not be my friend.

And I will be tasked with picking him up after school every day, and some days he’ll be home a couple of hours earlier than The Missus, but it won’t be the same. Which it isn’t designed to be, which is the whole point of growing up. But the whole point of growing old seems to be to try to hold onto your own childhood through your kids’.

Well, that’s the instinct I’m fighting, anyhow.

I know I should be looking forward to six—and I am, and all the remarkable advances in coolness yet to come (he’ll be beating me at chess before he’s seven)—but I wish I could capture five in amber.

When I was a kid, my whole family would pile into the station wagon and drive my older sibs to the airport when they had to fly back to college after holidays and school breaks. And my parents would weep and moan and carry on like it was the end of the world and it always seemed ridiculous to me. They’re only going to Champaign, Illinois, not Vietnam, I’d think, and they’d be back in no time to cramp my style all summer. What the hell was with the waterworks?

On a completely unrelated note, man am I going to miss five years old. Man oh man.