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Jeff Stimpson, 39, has been a working journalist for 15 years. He lives in New York with his wife Jill and sons Alex, 3, and Edwin, four months. He maintains a site of essays, Jeff's Life, at:
JEFF'S LIFE
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Monthly Column... |
by
Jeff Stimpson
The chapel-like room was full, and warm. I hadn't heard "P&C" played for real in 22 years, yet again I realized how it's an awful sad song to usher in summer.
This time, it played for those graduating Alex's school. Banners of paper and bright paint wished success to the grads as they moved into the big world of kindergarten. The banners had been made by the other classes of the school; Jill and I couldn't tell which on banner Alex and his classmates had smeared their own paint.
I looked out over the crepe paper streamers, the kids in walkers, the kids on the laps. I scanned to see who stared like Alex, who paid attention, who looked around, who clapped at the Spanish translation of the proceedings, who was ready to move on to the apple juice and cake waiting in the courtyard. I saw one of Alex's teachers point to where he sat with his class in the front row, but I couldn't spot him.
The morning's entertainment opened with the head of the school promising, "We're going to show off a little bit!" One graduating class then belted out, with the help of a recorded song on the sound system, "The Fire Truck Song." You wouldn't guess from the title that it could make your eyes tear. I didn't bawl, but I got misty.
Alex came into plain sight when his class and teachers assembled in a big semi-circle facing the audience. He looked small, sitting on a teacher's lap as she pressed a red cushiony tambourine into his hand. He shook it and waved his hands in enough of the right places to appear to be following along, and, except for occasional staring spells at the ceiling, he held his composure until the applause ended. Then he began to cry.
The next song, "Move On Back," was a long take, and I had to admire the fortitude of this class -- older? fewer "issues?" -- as they plowed through it. The song summoned cheers and chatter from the audience.
"Some of these kids have been here for two or three years," Alex's speech therapist whispered to me. She's worked at the school for 16 years, and has seen a lot of graduations. "It never loses it's emotional component," she said.
Alex's teacher had promised "a little taste" of what his real graduation would be like next year, when he leaves this school. We aren't looking forward to it: Kindergarten is a rough jump in special-ed. in New York City.
"When my son graduated, I started crying the minute he came down the aisle," the teacher said.
A honcho of the corporation that runs Alex's school then took the mike, and he got as far as how the school year had opened with a tragedy and was ending with a triumph when Jill came up to me and said Alex was having a fit.
I found him in the courtyard, being walked around by one of his teachers and crying harder than he ever thought of crying on September 11th. I carried him back inside -- he kept darting for the ladies' room -- and sat beside Jill. "Mommy?" he asked.
I handed him to her, and he stiff-armed her and started to wiggle under the pew in front of us. All the while the room was rocking with cheers and clapping, flashes erupting, a celebration I was trying to tap Alex into. I whispered the lyrics to "If You're Happy and You Know It" into his ear. That seemed to make something click, and he started clapping and laughing. I hoisted him to my shoulders. Between claps, he yanked my hair.
"Doing a good job on daddy's hair," the speech therapist noted.
"How's he doing?" I asked Jill.
"He's doing great!" she said.
Alex began to clap with the audience, and laugh. A little manic and he kept grabbing my hair, but he got along all right while the honchos handed out the diplomas. Each kid picked his or hers up to cheering and clapping and a barrage of flashbulbs on a warm June day that most of these parents probably thought they'd never see. One kid covered his eyes when they pressed the roll into his hand.
Most kids strode right up and took theirs, just like the high school grads for whom they usually play that dismal song. Now have one year exactly to get Alex and us in shape for when we hear that song again.
Copyright 2001 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
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