Noah

This is your first day of kindergarten, and I can't quite figure out how we got here. I can barely lift you now, but you used to weigh nothing, and I could rock you all night. You were lighter than some of the books I read, back when I still read.

This is the day we brought you home.

We had your car seat checked out at the hospital, and that was it: the one and only sunny day that January, just long enough for us to whisk you home. Your third day ever. And then what? We kind of looked at you, sleeping, and us exhausted, not quite sure how to move forward. Every little trip to the corner store was a Whole New Thing now, a whole new logistical process. It was a tiny little appartment, so I would strap you to my chest and take you for walks early in the morning so Mom could sleep. I'd get a coffee and something to eat, and off we'd go, down to the water, as long as you'd hold out. I tried to brush the crumbs out of your hair before Mom would see. You had enough hair to cover up the coffee stains, at least. When you were older, you'd get a steamed milk and join me: you've been a coffee shop kid all your life, for which, yay west coast.

Your hair makes you look older, but when it's slicked back, after a bath, I see more of the baby you used to be, in the roundness of your cheeks, the brightness of your eyes.

Almost all your pajamas are from the boys' department. Pirate, robot, train engineer, Galactic Adventure, penguins playing hockey. You did a perfect imitation of Homer Simpson when I gave you the Space Monkey jammies: "Oh yeaaaahhhh." You're sure not a princess.

My job didn't even exist when my father worked; I can't even imagine the world you'll find when you finish this schooling adventure you're starting today. You've missed records, tapes, CDs, pretty much DVDs, corded phones, the evening news on tv, really anything on tv, comic books, newsprint, renting a movie from a store…

We joke that the days before you are the "dim and dark days", you've changed us so much. It seems like you just got here, but it's so hard to imagine life without you now. And I don't want to imagine it.

There are things you'll probably never understand. When I was a kid, my father took pictures on "colour transparency film", and on special occasions he'd pull out the projector and screen, and we'd have a family slide show. That was how we connected with our own past. But you, you've had photos as the screensaver forever, you're surrounded by pictures from your past. Between three digital cameras and two phones there are probably ten thousand pictures of your life, mostly pretty blurry, some of them fine ammunition for when the boys (or girls) start knocking on the door in a few years. If nothing else, I've tried to keep track of who you were becoming all these days.

You're so excited this morning, to start school, so eager to grow up, maybe even more than losing your first wiggly tooth. It's my job to worry about you all the time, and I do: will you make friends? You're so shy, and I didn't think that was genetic, but you get that from me, somehow. (For the longest time you didn't like chocolate, and I started to doubt your parentage, but you're mine alright.) Are you getting enough vegetables? Calcium? Are your teeth clean? Are we reading enough books? Your N's are always backwards when you print your name, should I be worried about that?

Not today. Today you start school, and it's so far from 35 years ago in Winnipeg I don't even know what that means or where it's going to take you or who you're going to become along the way. So today you'll be great. Today and tomorrow, you'll be great.