Back to School, Back to Writing, Back to Blogging

I’m back from my summer of little-blogging. Thanks for tuning in again, friends. I missed you.

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This morning I dropped this snazzy guy above, backpack in hand, at the preschool for the first time.

I was carrying Mac, our one year old, and a checkbook and saying super wise things like  about how when you get out of the car in the morning, you should go right through the grass to the sidewalk so all of the SUV’s doubling as race cars don’t run you over.

That seemed important.

On the way down the steps, we saw a line of the ancient, wise ones known as kindergarteners. Justus, my four year old, screamed out to one of them like a devoted fan running along the red carpet at a movie premiere. “I like your angry birds shirt! I play that game.”

This is the single most refreshing things about kids if you ask me.

How everyone their height is assumed to be an immediate ally and source of fun. Someone you would never want to pass by without at least mentioning your common love for Angry Birds, even if you all are being marched in to school in very official first-day, single-line style.

When we got inside, we hung up Justus’ backpack (it’s Super Mario, thanks for wondering) and signed him in. Then I gave the teacher his epi-pen since he’s close-your-throat allergic to those death-happy peanuts in every PB and J on the planet. (Yes, I’m mildly bitter about it.)

The teacher looked worried, which is I guess how you want teachers to look since you don’t want to see them gazing off into oblivion imagining themselves tanning on some island when you’re giving them instructions about how to save your child’s oxygen supply.

Justus was clearly worried as well. But a neaby box of potato heads took a little of the edge off. So far school had offered the familiarity of both Angry Birds and potato heads, so there seemed to be a scrap of hope for the place.

He’s been saying all week he’s a little scared about school. That maybe he didn’t want to go. (I think what he meant is “My mom is too spectacular to leave behind,” but I’m not sure.) And, unfortunately, as the day grew closer, he became more definitive about it not being a good idea. At all.

“I don’t want to try anything new. I like what we have going on at home here.” He said to Chuck and I one night with dead-seriousness.

We like what we have going on here too.

(Justus also mentioned that he felt kids who went to school grew up and that then his clothes wouldn’t fit him. Which, you know, given his new requirement that he stop shedding his shorts and shirt within 5 minutes of getting dressed and try to stay clothed while at school, this seemed like a valid concern.)

So the last few days, I let Justus look through childhood yearbooks so he could see myself and his Dad enjoying school as children. I showed him Facebook pictures of his cousins, who started school a day before him, as they smiled proudly on their front porch holding signs. We talked him through what the day would be like and made a big deal of doing pizza with the cousins and Grandpa last night, and then buying a brand new backpack and lunch box and a new set of clothes to wear the first day.

We watched a cartoon about Bubble Guppies going back to school (they’re fish, so it’s supa-clever). And we told a bedtime story about school too.

We even printed out the exact same “First Day” sign his cousins had in their back-to-school photo.

And here’s the clincher…I promised to take him to the playland after I picked him up so he could tell Mac and I all about his first day.

But still, as I walked out of the preschool and began fading toward the parking lot, Justus cried…a little…the moment I walked away. And I know where this is where a lot of lovely moms fight back tears.

But not one came.

I felt good. Really good actually.

I’m excited for Justus. God willing, he has a lifetime of opportunities ahead of him and three half days a week in pre-K programs is one of the steps that is going to propel him toward having the skills and ideas to find goodness in his adult years.

His little soul is brimming with quality family time. After an every-day rhythm with me at home these last couple years, and a whole summer of pontooning with both Dad and Mom at home 24-7 all season, he’s got family love flowing through his veins.

And lucky for him, when he is in another place than us, we don’t forget he exists.  We’re no less family. It just gives him room to become fully himself and continue to bring our family more laughs and smiles as he does.

And this is something of where I’m headed too.

For a long time, I’ve been making ambiguous statements about my writing and blogging future. I want to write about connectedness, about community, about brotherhood (and sisterhood). About what binds us together as people living in the same towns, in the same countries, on the same earth.

All of it feels big and endless as it swirls inside of me, and I think it’ll be a learning process as I figure out how to hone in on this theme, and explore it thoroughly, and communicate it clearly. It’ll probably take me a while to get the blogging rhythm right. To make complete sense. To say what I mean.

But in the end, I don’t think it’s much different than the way I spent my morning today.

I hope we as people–American people, yes…and, if you identify that way, people of faith–don’t let the art of knowing one another slip through our texting, tweeting fingers. I hope we create a place where each other can belong and that even when others aren’t present with us, that we will still find ways to humanize them, choose connection with them and wish them well. That we will make things a little easier and more connective for others along the way.

If you resonate with some piece of that, I hope you’ll come back and keep reading. Give me a chance to find my way with this new thread. And contribute as much as you can to my learnings along the way. You’re always welcome here, friends–new and old.