Summer beckons, and it feels like we are making the great leap this year from the familiar to the unknown. Claire’s leaving kindergarten behind and heading to Grade 1 in September, and Anna is leaving preschool and heading for kindergarten. The summer represents the gulf between the old and the new, the last vestige of Little Kid Land before they are in school every day all day for, oh, the rest of their lives.
I suppose I’m nostalgic, but right now it feels great. Leaving the daycare (and the fees, oh the fees!) behind. Good-bye to the arcane rules of preschool, the push-pull of teachers who reject last season’s sunscreen and Anna’s favourite crocs, who dictate which cupcakes are acceptable and what toys are not allowed at Show and Tell. I know one day I’ll look back with great fondness and nostalgia, but right now I’m ready for it all to be done. I’m eager to ease up a little on the very cautious approach to early childhood education and embrace the chaos that is elementary school.
But first, the summer. French camp and swimming pools, a week at the cottage and several trips involving a tent. Soccer on Tuesdays and supper on the back deck, battling the pine needles and the wasps and the humidity, annoyances always outweighed by the freedom to wear a bathing suit all day long and eat peanuts and watermelon for lunch.
This summer beckons as the first with big kids. Both can ride a bike now for miles, and Anna, freshly 4, needs neither training wheels nor a push to get started. Thus, after a 7-year-drought that began with pregnancy, Mama can jump on her own bike again and race the kids through the ravines and along the spit towards the lake, picnic in the paniers and no need for an afternoon nap. I did so love their Little Kid years, but a Big Kid summer stretches before us like freedom.
In September, there will be time to panic about kindergarten and lunchboxes and schedules, and whether we can possibly fit swimming and ukelele lessons in after school. But for now there is just a week left of preschool and four days until report cards, and nothing but sunshine in the summer forecast.