I understand why people pressure their adult children for grandkids

Spring break approaches as the year flies by.    I sat in the Kindergarten classroom this week looking at all the kids, realizing with a little surprise, a little pride, a little nostalgia how much they’ve all grown, how confident they’ve become since September.    

I’ve had more of a shocking experience, yet similar, with Austin’s fifth grade class.   I pretty much dropped out of volunteering in his classroom after third grade.   At that point the teachers need more clerical help; and I’m always the parent who jams the copier, three-hole punches the wrong side of the paper, tears out the wrong workbook page . . .  so I decided to bow out.   I much prefer the kind of classroom volunteer work where I’m on the carpet with the kids doing art projects or leading storytime.   

But I’ve been back with the fifth graders this winter/spring for a few events and have really been shocked, forgive the cliche, at how much they’ve grown.    These kids are still, in my mind, the first graders we met four years ago.     But no, they aren’t.   None of them have that baby look anymore, none of them speak with an adorable little lisp, and some of the girls are almost as tall as I am.   These are almost-middle schoolers.     These are on their way.

I’ve sat watching their presentations, marveling at this process, feeling like they are growing up before my eyes.    There is the coolness factor developing in them, too,    I get the polite “hello, Mrs. K” from some of them, ignored by many more of them.   Definitely a far cry from being mauled by hugging throngs of the six-year-olds I remember them to be.   

I stretched out in the bed next to Austin one night, talking to him as he was falling asleep.   Hard to believe I have a ten, actually almost-eleven-year-old.    Stretched out beside me, he’s coming awfully close to being almost as long as I am.   In my mind he should still be curled up in the crook of my arm, head on my shoulder.    

I thought of this, too, as I watched the fifth graders in class this week.    I’m sure I’m not the only parent out there feeling this way, even as we watch with pride as our children, barreling toward young adulthood with great speed, progress along their paths.   

So, I left a fifth grade assembly I had attended, with all of this sort of mixed emotion, and it weighed heavily as much as I knew how silly it was to feel that way.   

Then, I saw the Kindergarten classes on the playground, so I decided to go over and say hi to Will.    As soon as he saw me he yelled, “MOM!”  and ran toward me.   And he was followed by a wonderful, music-to-my-ears chorus of “WILL’S MOM!” as his friends made his way toward me and mauled me with hugs and excited questions of “Are you playing with us today?!”   

It made me feel as if I’d been granted a few years of reprieve from something.