For 32 years, my husband Sam Slotnick, dressed in a tie and jacket, returned to his classroom at New Paltz Middle School on the first day of school. It was often the hottest day of the summer, just like this year. It’s the beginning. The first of day of a new cycle.
The September my eldest daughter left for college for the first time I wept all day, simultaneously angry at myself for the indulgence. No one had died, yet I was in mourning.
I had an 18-month-old at home — a quiet inward child with a calm delicacy so unusual that my meditation teacher once asked me, “Why can’t you be serene, like your baby?”
On her first day of kindergarten, when I stood with the other parents on the side of the classroom, my peaceful child beckoned me, in her quiet way. “Mommy,” she whispered. “Can you please leave the room, but stand outside? I want to see what it will feel like to be here without you.” Heartbreak. I gave her away into a world beyond my control.
The day brings back memories.
When the time and date came for me to bring a different child to her first day of kindergarten, we were in the midst of a play date at Ujjala Schwartz’s house. It was time to go. I heard my daughter scream from upstairs where she was playing with Ujjala’s son, Tyagi. I sprinted. There was Tyagi looking amused, next to my child who was red-faced and crying. Her feet were locked together with toy handcuffs. I did not want to lose my composure in front of Ujjala who was a student of eastern philosophy. I tried to remain serene, but Tyagi could not find the key to open the lock. Twenty minutes until kindergarten. Ujjala and I tugged and pulled, twisted and turned the apparatus. The handcuffs, defiant, sprang back to their original shape as soon as we removed our throbbing fingers.
“We have to call the police,” Ujjala said. Two men in full police uniforms arrived, took one look at the situation and asked me, “What kind of game were these children playing?”
Without too much difficulty, they broke the toy lock and set my daughter free.
By the time we arrived at Duzine, I managed to muster up as much emotional poise my lack of natural serenity would allow. It helped to see Gail Slotwinski in front of the class. Once I asked her what it was like to teach five year-olds.
“When I tell people I teach kindergarten, they often say, ‘That is so sweet.’ It’s not. These children are at the beginning, a lot of life, not always good, has happened to them already. The first day of school is the most serious day of all. The whole human drama is in a kindergarten classroom, inequities of abilities, social challenges, and separation anxieties have to managed without disturbing their trust and sense of safety when out in the world, many for the first time.”
Last week, on the first day of school, I rode around New Paltz. Mothers, fathers and children were standing at bus stops. The temperature was already in the upper seventies by 9 a.m. From a distance, the children with their vibrant clothes and backpacks looked like moving colorforms, a toy popular in the 1970’s.
This year is the same and different. When I sent my children to school, I did not have to worry about school shootings or pandemics. Nevertheless, I had fears. What I have come to know is the first day of school is only one in the parade of days of letting go that we endure during the course of our children’s lives.
Mine are adults now — parents looking for safe schools and daycares. What remains the same is fear and love often inhabiting the same space when it comes to concerns about our children. Yet, the calendar rolls around to the hot first day of school every year and hope rules the day.
Join the family! 
