On the threshold....

My boy started secondary school this week. It seems an eternity since he started primary, and at the same time, not long at all. Starting primary is tied into memories of my marriage breakdown, and the additional difficulty of trying to ease the change from preschool to school for a chap whose Dad had just left. Tough times to start; I learned to cut and run at the first sign of tears, with the reassurance that I knew he stopped as soon as I disappeared from view…sound advice for clingy mums. Sometimes they need you less than you need them. At five, he’d recently changed from an angelic (in looks only) pale blonde to the dirty blonde he still is. Every year brought change; different teachers, different issues.  He manfully dealt with an older bully by getting his besties together and telling the bully that they’d ALL deal with him if he didn’t lay off . The bully was in 6th class, my son and his friends in 4^th at the most. I heard nothing till it was all over, but had observed the silences and reluctance in the previous weeks. I’m still a little awe-struck at how they dealt with it. 

We’ve been through interminable quizzes, swimming galas, school tours, tonsillitis, S-Tens, and ripped trousers on a weekly basis, like mothers and sons up and down the country. And mud aplenty, because it rains a lot here, and little boys pay no heed.

And now he’s a young man, and the start of secondary marks that threshold for many boys like him. For me, it’s unbearably poignant. And no doubt the same for legions of Irish mammies, for that is what I have become. He passed me out height-wise just before his twelfth birthday. Admittedly I’m on the small side, but now he’s grown six inches in nine months. He’s 5’9”, his voice has broken to a deep bass, and he still takes teddies to bed. But not to school. He’s full of enthusiasm for his new school, and I’m bursting with happiness at his eyes-wide–open interest in all his new subjects. Who knew? His science teacher had him from day one. I can tell that there’s quiet awe of his music-teacher. He wants a school jersey so he can play on the school team. All of this brings a lump to my throat, and memories of my own teens in the late '70s spring to mind unbidden. It’s an eternity, and no time at all, since I took the same steps, since life was suddenly filled with the same boundless potential. So much has changed, but so much remains the same, for him, at this threshold. Since then I’ve travelled on, through college, emigration, return, professional recognition, marriage, children, bereavement, personal trauma. But life, for me, turns on moments like this.