My son was cool as a cucumber and keen to get on with the adventure of big school
Autumn draws ever-closer around us like a beautiful darkening cloak. This season brings the children crunchy leaves, conkers, silhouettes, stories by the fire and extra blankets on the bed.
It has been a busy season for our family so far: a sweet new baby girl heralded autumn’s first beginnings and the first of September was Sean’s first day in big school. That was a big day for all of us. Like all parents, we fretted as to how he might adjust to the new world of school although, in the event, he was far more composed than us.
It moved me almost to tears that morning to see him ready to stride out proudly into the world in his oversized school uniform, his elasticated tie as crooked as his happy smile. Yet even if emotion welled up in me, he was cool as a cucumber and keen to chirpily get on with the adventure of big school.
We walked down the street to find our local school thronged by a crowd of parents, grandparents and children. After several wrong turnings down corridors, we finally located the long-fabled room three, which was to be Sean’s junior infants’ class for the year.
First day
I still have a perfect picture in my mind of my mother’s face, as she looked down at me before leaving the classroom on my first day in school.
Now I have a symmetrical and similarly perfect memory of my son’s face on his first day in school, as I glanced back before very reluctantly closing the classroom door.
He is thriving: making new friends and joyfully soaking up information – his Irish is close to surpassing mine already.
He comes home saying things like: “You have a nice smig” and “I want a glass of uisce please”.
I also discover him singing songs I remember from when I was a boy. There is a beautiful continuity in all this.
Although many now opt for secular schools, I’m glad my kids have the rhythms of daily prayer and the Christian calendar in their school-going lives. These are important markers of the mysterious for children – and children’s minds are readily open to the mysterious.
The biting wind and the dark evenings are ushering us rudely indoors these evenings.
Excursions
Each summer evening after work I took the kids to the beach, the woods or the park, but such excursions will soon be curtailed and replaced by journeys of the imagination, as stories are instead read by the fire, now that winter steals swiftly toward us.
Still, going outdoors does not switch off their imaginations – far from it. We took a lovely autumn walk in Glendalough last Sunday to discover a ruined miners’ village at the craggy neck of that magical valley.