A Dragon No More

A year or two back, in the cold of a Canadian winter, my family attended a party. It might have been for Christmas, or New Year’s, or even Easter, since winter can last well into spring. In any case, we had decided to take the car to our destination, so there must have been snow.  What I remember is that as we got in the icy mini-van, I puffed a mist trail of breath that hung still between me and the windscreen. ‘I’m a dragon!’ I called to the kids in the back seat. ‘Look!’

‘Mom,’ the eldest chided me. ‘That was funny ten years ago when I was five. Not now.’

‘It wasn’t even funny then,’ said the middle one.

‘Teens,’ I groused to husband.

‘Hey, I’m not a teen!’ said my daughter, our youngest. ‘I’m still a kid. Treasure me! Treasure me!’  

We all laughed. But my heart broke a little, too.

I felt the same way last week, when daughter completed Grade 6 and celebrated her graduation from Huron Street Primary School. Here in Toronto, elementary education continues up to ages thirteen/fourteen, but a division occurs between ‘junior’ and ‘senior’ levels. Senior elementary, encompassing grades seven and eight, takes place in separate ‘middle schools’. It’s a breath-takingly short period of time—in one year, out the next-- but still seems to me a good idea, a system that worked well for our older children, launching them gently into high school at grade nine.

The Grade 6 graduation at Huron Street was emotional (of course) but also lots of fun. Daughter looked stunningly beautiful ( if I'm only the slightest bit biased). The lovely photos showed me what I’ve been denying for the last few months: I am the shortest member of my family. My parents came to Toronto from Los Angeles to join the celebration, which was wonderful for many reasons, including that the photos with them indicate that at least I am taller than my mother.

The graduate herself had a brilliant time posing for pictures with her friends and teachers, giggling with her particular ‘squad’ of girls, dancing, and eating chocolate-drenched marshmallow pops at the After-Party, held in one of the colleges at the university.

A devoted parent had created a slide show depicting the grads then-and-now, as babies and in grade six, provoking laughter and shrieks. A game of Truth and Dare began (and was aborted by a watchful mom). 

But late that night, my sleepy celebrant finally pajama-ed and settled in bed, tired and sugared and overwrought all at once, with the dog curled at her feet, the tears came. She is not ready to grow up just yet. ‘Grade 6 is a terrible time to have to leave your school, right when you get so attached. They should make you leave in grade 3,’ she sobbed. No, I thought; I remembered her in grade 3, a year after we arrived in Toronto. I remember my relief that she at last seemed securely attached, to new friends and new teachers and the new school routine, comfortable in her classroom and on the playground and in her own skin, after her precarious, anxious beginning in Canada. 

She is so much more solid now, entrenched. She sounds Canadian, unlike her brothers. Saying goodbye to Huron is tough, to be sure, but now so is she. Her connections-- like ours-- have grown, to wonderful friends and to our neighbourhood, which she can now traverse independently. Leaving Huron Street is a big wrench, for her and for us.  It’s been part of our lives since we arrived in Canada, the first centre of my immigrant's social universe, and now it bids us farewell. That in itself is a new experience for our family; in the past it was we who abandoned schools (by moving) rather than waiting around for schools to eject us.  And I am sad. My own tears came the afternoon after the graduation, on the last day of school, the last time picking up my baby, whom I do indeed treasure, at the end of the day when the 3:30 bell rang. Well, I actually got to the playground at 3:35. As usual, though rushing, I arrived late.

There are definitely aspects of primary school I won’t miss.

Adieu, primary years. Welcome, all the rest.