to my daughter
April 29, 2015 § 4 Comments
I’ve been missing a little lately among my words, shuffling between spaces even as my mind seems stuck to Monday.
This week your father and I gathered among administrators, educators, and support staff to outline your transition from elementary school to middle school. We were sitting amidst professionals in a personal moment of accomplishment and anticipation; change rattling around old memories and stirring up little motes of sentiment.
The newer members of our team only know the vibrant student quick with a smile or kindness between distracted demonstrations of ability. Your test scores and report cards don’t illuminate the place from which we began, so we piece together your progress with memories of the little girl who was lost at school to give form to the path of your growth.
Your speech therapist was witness to your preschool precociousness. In her early memories I see you stomping through adventures with loud, messy footprints as you twirled noisily into the fun of discovery. Your words were delightfully backwards and your behavior was harmlessly resistant. I ran circles around your day dreams and might have had more luck lassoing the moon than containing the enthusiasm of your mischief. Over the years you’ve settled into your skin, honoring others’ expectations, but you’ve preserved the twinkle in your eye that accompanies each well-humored smile.
Your resource teacher could chart your consistently inconsistent performance with memories of old struggles and new confidence in the same way your social worker might acknowledge your tenderness for adversity in others and your tenacity in self-sufficiency. Among these friends I remember the doubts and fears of anxious tears against the contrast of beaming revelations of ability. In these memories I recall the shape of each accomplishment by the scale of the challenge behind us.
Others in our company knew you first as your brother’s little sister, a bright smile in the shadow of your big brother’s experiences. A personal counsel in matters of social norms who leaned pridefully and competitively into shared interests; guiding and following your brother’s attention with a sister’s mastery of familiar frustrations. In this context I could hear your footsteps chasing after your brother’s as you push your way into his experiences in search of your own accomplishments.
You were there in that meeting in so many different memories. The preschool firecracker and the fifth grade safety patrol seemed to wink at us from the perimeter of our protocol, chin up acknowledging the work of progress and the play of growing up. We were there to advocate in your absence, but every decision rang clear with your presence. We placed new challenges beside old supports and aligned ourselves to uncomfortable certainties for uncertain success.
I’m excited and terrified, inspired and cautious. This new beginning feels a little like starting all over again and I’m desperate to peek ahead to the next chapter for reassurance.
Love, Mom
scribblechic 
Looking back, as a parent, the best feedback has always been in the form of the anecdotes told at parent-teacher conferences as well as (best of all) the hand-written notes that found themselves on report cards and such. The grades and the letters were in so many ways just stamps, brands, judgments; as such not really all that welcome, certainly not in the way the stories were. As parents the numbers don’t really count all that much in the end, but the narratives do. Sure, the numbers may serve as warning signs but they’re quickly forgotten once the appropriate turns have been taken, course corrections made. The stories, though, they linger on and on…
Beautifully stated, Maurice. I only wish there were more room in the space of official documentation for teachers to pen these narratives.
There should be. Ask for it, but in your own gentle graceful way. Pass it on. In time, maybe it will come to pass. Perhaps for you, perhaps not, but either way you will be a part of a moment in the right direction.
I loved this comment for both your kindness and encouragement. Thank you, Maurice.