Firsts (Coda)

So I did manage to get the story, however abbreviated, of Andres' first day of first grade.

But before sharing that, here's something I have learned over time--asking him to talk about his day is like looking through a pair of cracked glasses. Some objects will remains clear and in focus. Others will appear multiple times, seeming to be of much greater prominence than they are in real life. And other objects will be invisible entirely.

Hopefully this metaphor helps, because my son--my dear son who had woken up at dawn and who had just finished his first day as a first grader--led off with a story about the bathroom.

Me: "So how was your day?!"
Andres: "Great! Daddy in Kindergarten, when we had to go to the bathroom, we had to do this to tell the teacher we had to go [makes fist, with thumb poking through the 3rd and 4th fingers, and jiggles hand] but daddy in first grade we have a pass! And if you are a boy and you have to go to the bathroom you just ask the teacher for the pass, and then you put it on the hook for the boys bathroom and then you go, and if you are a girl you put the pass on the hook for the girls bathroom, like that."
Me: "That's so cool. So in first grade, you just go get a pass?"
Andres: "YES!"
Me: "That's amazing!"

He was beaming as he told me about this new privilege, so I tried to play along a bit, though I would have preferred to have heard about math, or reading, or some new friend he had made. This was such a big day for him, and he chose to lead with a story about...the bathroom?

But it was hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm. This was clearly a big moment that, in his mind at least, seemed to put him on the path to greater independence. Today, a free pass to the bathroom; tomorrow, his first car.

I pressed for more information about the day. They had circle time. He read a book. His Kindergarten teacher stopped into his new classroom to say hi. Nothing engendered as much excitement or detail as the new bathroom routine. He was happy, but asking for more detail was going nowhere.

It was also his first day going to the school's afterschool program, something he had been looking forward to for a year. And he did want to tell me about this. He said he and his friends spent a lot of time making a ramp for marbles to roll down. This seemed interesting, but before I could ask questions about it he was well onto describing some other activity. He also told me that he and a friend were spying on a girl, but it all sounded innocuous and may have been an element of a larger game they were playing. Who knows. It's been a while since I was in first grade, but I seem to recall games working this way.

So all in all a good first day. Same deal on Wednesday, with him reporting a few more anecdotes--they did dot drawings in art class, he scraped his hands during a game of tag at recess, he accidentally didn't eat his lunch because he thought there was time to do that at afterschool (there wasn't, so the poor kid had a cheese stick and water at noon). They also did "math mixup," which he sincerely tried to describe for me, but which I fully failed to understand.

As I was putting him down to sleep last night I asked him, one more time, how he liked first grade. "It's good," he said. And then he added, with a smile, "but I can't wait until I am in second grade."