See You In September

by Erica Schacter Schwartz
Special To The Jewish Week

It was a strange end of the school year for my family. Two of my daughters missed the last day of school, one because she had a confirmed case of the flu, the other because she either had the flu as well, or a virus that looked a lot like it. In either case, they were each homebound.

For my daughter Caroline, it was actually the second year in a row that she was sick on the last day of school. But the truth is, the girls were not upset. They had each other, many unseen DVR-recorded shows and their DS’s. My husband, on the other hand, was devastated. He felt so badly for them. To give some sense of closure to each of

them, I brought them outside the school building after dismissal so that they could each say goodbye to their teachers. I asked the teachers what they had done in school that day with their classes, and tried to do the same with my girls when we got home — go through memories from the year, think of their favorite activities, speak about the classmates they’ll miss, and so on.

I then found myself making the same corny declaration to them that my parents made to me at the end of each school year. They would always tell us that the day we completed one grade, we officially became members of the next grade. And so, Sophie, I said, you are now in pre-K. Caroline, you are now in kindergarten. But they did not seem that impressed.

What I started to realize is how differently a child’s perception of an ending is than ours. Saying goodbye to their teachers, each of them was quiet, shy, even a bit disoriented, but neither of them was emotional. Neither of them fully recognized that they are never going to be in that classroom again, with those same teachers, with those same children. It is that very idea that made my husband and me so sorry for them to miss the end — to us the milestone of completing another school year is significant, a reminder to us that our children are getting older.

When I finished with Caroline and Sophie’s “outdoor” goodbyes, I then headed indoors to pick up Gabby, my 7-year-old, and congratulate her on becoming a second grader. Though it was not a Friday, grades one through four were gathered together for a final sing-a-long oneg, and I found myself barely able to swallow the lump in my throat. For starters, there was the sight of some beloved teachers who would not be returning and that left a sense of void and loss. But there was also just a great emotional charge in the room. Kids were chanting goodbyes to their teachers. They were hugging their teachers and one another. They were wishing the fourth graders good luck as they move onto the middle school.
Just a few years older than Caroline and Sophie, these lower school children were beginning to understand the concept of goodbye, the fact that this grade, or stage, in their life was now over. Gabby understands that she will never be in first grade again, that a new school experience is waiting for her in September.

And I know that this understanding will only further deepen as she ages. We just completed the season of graduations, and at each stage, whether high school, college, graduate school, the emotional weight seems to grow heavier. And while a part of this magnitude has to do with the level of academic accomplishment, I think a greater piece of it is about connectedness. As we get older, we form deeper connections to other people, to places, to experiences, and this makes each exit that much harder.
The completion of any school year, and graduations in particular, mark an ending, a signal that we are moving on, and while these moments on the surface seem celebratory in nature, they are in fact bittersweet. They remind us that a new stage is beginning, one in which we are not yet settled, not yet connected, and that can leave us feeling empty.

Judaism seems to recognize this inevitable insecurity, or sadness that accompanies completion. On Simchat Torah, in the very same Torah service that we complete the Five Books of Moses, we begin reading them once again. We do not pause to feel the emptiness that immediately follows the ending. We swallow the emptiness, and start a new cycle, embracing the excitement of a new beginning.

Erica Schacter Schwartz’s column appears the first week of the month.

Signup for our weekly email newsletter here.

Check out the Jewish Week's Facebook page and become a fan! And follow the Jewish Week on Twitter: start here.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization