Summer Draws To A Close

Tomorrow (today actually, but I'm still awake so it feels like tomorrow) I'm taking my youngest and two of his buddies to meet their teachers. I'll be working at home in the morning and all the rest of the parents will be scattered around at their own jobs, so it's off to school for me at noon. We'll make sure the kids know where their lockers are, say hi to the teachers. The boys are nearing the end of their elementary school career so none of this should be a surprise.

I don't mind doing this; in fact, I enjoy it. It's fun walking around the school before classes start, looking at the rooms full of butterfly posters and cut-out numbers and bright signs put together by teachers hoping for a nice year.

There is no chance that my father would have done this. None. First of all, he worked, my mother didn't, outside the house anyway, and the idea of taking a day off to meet his son's teacher would have never occurred to him. It wouldn't have occurred to any of the other dads on the block either. They were good guys and all, but school was mom stuff, to the extent anything besides grades was the concern of parents at all.

Second, even if he'd somehow gotten roped into doing it, say my mother fell into a temporary coma, it would have been the two of us. If my friends needed to go, they'd go with their own parents. If their parents died or something, he'd have fed and housed them, but take them to meet their teachers? That's crazy talk.

I like that things have changed. I like that my neighbors ask me to do this for them, just as they've taken my kids to everything from tryouts to back-to-school shopping. I like that I'll show up at our little local school with my neighbors' kids and we'll walk around and see what there is to see and then we'll go home and have lunch with another dad who has the day off and his kid and then we'll go play some ball and it won't seem crazy, it will just be a good day.