5th Grade

My son is finishing up 5th grade. Daniel has a day and a half of school left before he will enter his last year of elementary school. He is officially a tween, but still seems very much like a child. I do not know if it is because he is my youngest, or because he is a boy, or because of his personality, but he feels so much younger than when my daughter was finishing 5th grade. Daniel loves imaginary play. He loves to dress up. He is proud of being different, proud of his long hair and his love of the color pink. Daniel is his own person.

I remember 5th grade. 5th grade was a very tumultuous time for me. I began the year with a move to Junction City, Kansas, where my mom had secured a teaching job while my dad stayed behind at his aerospace engineering job while waiting for our house to sell. At Christmas time, our family moved to a suburb of Seattle, Washington, where my dad's job was transferred. Three days after Christmas, my last remaining grandparent died. In May, after I had a rough and rather unsuccessful transition to Seattle, we moved back to Kansas, where I finished out the school year in Wichita, Kansas. I attended three elementary schools and was exhausted by the time the school year concluded.

I remember 5th grade as a time of immense uncertainty and awkwardness. Part of this was because of attending so many schools, of needing to reinvent myself so many times, of feeling alone and adrift in a sea of people I presumed to be much more at ease. But part of this was the age. I entered puberty and was promptly ashamed of my body. I still loved to literally run around the backyard and tell stories to myself, while my classmates exchanged confessions of which boy was the cutest and who had a crush on whom. I was physically becoming a woman but was still emotionally and mentally very much a girl. I read 59 books during the month of February of 5th grade because I was so lonely I had nothing else to do but read.

Daniel has only attended one school for 5th grade. But it has not been a time without impediments. 5th grade is a time when childhood and adolescence alternately push and pull. Anxieties and stresses can loom stronger than before. And still, when I think of my own 5th grade experience, I think of what made me stronger, more resilient, more empathetic. I think of how I learned to straddle multiple worlds. I think of how I laid the foundations for who I am as an adult. And I hope Daniel will look back at 5th grade and think the same.