Kindergarten Ready

“Mom! Guess what!” My five year old ran up to me, elated. “I can zip up my coat!” She demonstrated with her aqua puffy jacket.

“Wow, sweetheart! This is huge!”

“Huge?” she repeated, eyes widening.

“Super huge!”

“The hugest ever??”

I laughed. “Well, one thing is for sure–you are so ready for kindergarten!”

The pride and anticipation on her little face was priceless.

Yes, she is ready. This past week, we hit another milestone. Kindergarten roundup.

“I can’t believe it’s kindergarten roundup already,” I said to my husband the evening before, as I googled directions to the Lutheran parochial school where we will be sending her.

He let out a sigh. “It’s the beginning of the end. The next thing you know she’ll be graduating high school. And she won’t need her Daddy anymore.”

“Well, aren’t you a little ray of sunshine.” I glanced up to see his forlorn expression. “And she’ll always need her Daddy.”

Yet her independence is growing.

The next morning, we arrived at school a few minutes early. The rush hour drive to an unfamiliar city had left me a little frazzled. I sat motionless in the drivers seat to catch my breath. My daughter piped up immediately, “Mom!! Come on!! It’s kindergarten roundup! Unbuckle me!!!”

Once through the doors, she became more cautious, clutching my hand tightly. The school secretary instructed us to hang up our coats, and then we followed the gaggle of big and little people to the kindergarten classroom.

That’s where things almost went off the rails. This being my firstborn, I didn’t realize what kindergarten roundup entailed. I had envisioned touring the classroom, meeting other kids, and doing fun activities together. Instead, the kindergarten teacher introduced herself briefly and told the parents to scram. Okay, so that’s not verbatim. (Actually, the teacher is really wonderful, the kind of kindergarten teacher I wish I would have had.) But we both were taken aback by the prospect of being separated in an unfamiliar place. I immediately put on a smile, but my daughter was in full panic mode and started to cry.

The teacher took her hand and assured her that she would have fun, steering her toward a table full of kids busily cutting and coloring. As I watched her go, still crying, instead of a flashback my mind did a kind of rapid-fire fast-forward…to other scenes of parting that the two of us would experience as she grew up: her first actual day of kindergarten, her first sleepover with friends, her first out-of-town trip without me, and, yes, her high school graduation and the start of college and beyond.

I shook my head. It’s only kindergarten roundup, I told myself. I was taking a page from my husband’s book.

I followed the other parents to the room where we would receive our orientation. After offering us doughnut holes and coffee, the principal opened with a devotion. He read: “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it” (Proverbs 22:6). Then suddenly he was talking about all those scary firsts…right up through high school, college…and beyond.

God had something to tell me at that parent orientation.

He wanted to remind me how my husband and I could be prepared for the firsts, and prepare our little girls.

When we look back on their girlhood, we will know that we started them off on the way they should go. We will have talked about God’s promises with them at home and away from home, in the minivan, at the grocery store, at a play place…wherever we found ourselves. We will have impressed these truths on the little girls entrusted to us…at mealtime, at bedtime, whenever we had opportunity. This school will have served as an invaluable partner in that daily process.

And as they go off to experience all the firsts, they and we their parents can be reassured by all those promises repeated so often at home and at school…Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus…In all things God works for the good of those who love him…Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

Comfort for every parting. The ones that still seem so far off…and the one now at hand, while God’s Word was reorienting my mind and heart in that roomful of parents, and my daughter was hopefully not still crying in her new kindergarten classroom.

Soon enough we were ushered out, and I headed back to the kindergarten room. I caught a glimpse of my daughter before she spotted me. Her eyes were red but the tears had stopped. She stood stock-still, apprehensive but resolute. Then she saw me and ran over to hug me. She showed me her kindergarten roundup cowboy hat and star, along with the picture she had drawn of herself.

I told her I was proud of her. She stuck it out even though it was new and unexpected and she needed to do it without me.

She is ready.

Armed with God’s promises, my husband and I are ready, too.