This is my Kody, - Takoda. When asked to speak today the first thing I did was peruse my phone for old pictures and videos of him from the last year. As you know it's all too easy to get lost in the day-to-day. Sometimes we need to step back a bit. I scanned my photos and even probed my pre-iPhone 5s pics from Facebook to really see his progress. Truth is, he hasn't changed too much - his face is still beautifully baby - not like other years where he's sometimes looked like a completely different kid from one to the next. Not this year. This year, if anything, it's been his body that changed - especially recently. He's just so big! He certainly has me wondering about that "super stretchiness" which is his professed superpower of the month.
Change can be scary. Most of you are here with your children all about the same age, but we're all coming from such vastly different backgrounds. It's because of this diversity that school can sometimes be so scary. It's hard enough dealing with the differences inherent in our own families, but now we have to deal with all kinds of differences. Some we're ready for. Some we run from.
It took a long time for my wife and I to conceive Takoda. Beyond all the regular difficulties of two women trying to make a baby together, we were using a donor who lived 200 miles away! But I wasn't worried. We were a fearless couple in our youth - jumping out of planes and swimming with sharks. I knew nothing was gonna stop us. We were together 10 years before taking this leap into family life and actually having a kid seemed like the most mundane of our aspirations. I can still remember a moment on the way to the hospital when a cab driver warned that as happy as she was she'd never known fear until she'd had a kid. I remember thinking, she'd never known us. Boy, was I wrong! I've been back to the hospital 4 times in 2 years since and only once was to give birth to our second!
Since kids, it's all been a whirlwind of joy ...and fears, growth spurts and fevers, nursemaid elbows, bouncy house limps, but mostly lots and lots of love and laughs. Every parent knows this whirlwind. It's one thing we all have in common that regardless of where we come from, or where we're going. It starts with the conception and pregnancy worries, morphs into obsessive concerns about complicated topics no one completely understands, twists every long-term unresolved issue you ever swept under your rug, and somehow ...connects us to the universe in a way that we could have never foreseen. My life went from black and white to technicolor in an instant and my dreams have taken on a whole new importance since the day my son was born. And every day since I feel awake, alive, ...and alerted. I'm a teacher by profession, but I knew nothing about teaching until I had kids. Now I'm a teaching critic (aka parent) as these good folks at YAI can tell you. I bothered them about everything and accepted nothing on their word. Some of us at work joke about how teachers make the most difficult parents to deal with. And we do! Because it's all too easy to see each class graduate year after year, but it another to see the years of learning your child will never get back.
This school though is on the cutting edge of where education is headed. We weren't casual about where Kody would spent most of his day. It came highly recommended by friends and colleagues we knew and trusted. It was the second one of it's kind that we've known on this level. And it has been the place I've trusted for my son's main educational experience this entire formative year in his life. In that time, I've come to know Kody no longer as my baby, but as my son - a realization I suspect we've all had. Kody loves to learn. He looks for friends on the playground and anxiously, inventively creates games for them to partake in. He jokes with family. He creates elaborate playtime scenarios alone and with his little brother, Nikkan. Kody loves to act, perform, dance and tell jokes, and their starting to get funny! He notices everything and feels such immense compassion for those he loves. He highlights the most interesting parts of his day for me at the dinner table, and asks his most pressing questions at night after bedtime stories. And each moment is another step for him a little farther into a very big and very scary world that my wife and I are here to help him navigate.
Many people don't but I remember my preschool. My friend who was a little older than had gone there the year before, and I remember how big and bad and cavalier she seemed telling me about it, but she wasn't going to be there with me so her complacency didn't relieve much pressure. I felt out there alone every day for the first time. I remember the front door, the arch, how large it looked, forbidding. That stoop was insurmountable. And I remember passing by later, how progressively smaller and smaller it became over the years every new time that I saw it. I now see it an entirely different way. I remember being scared in preschool probably every day, missing my mother, and crying when I was once the "cheese standing alone." Everyone danced around in a circle holding hands, fast and loud. I felt like I couldn't hide; I felt like I couldn't join in or escape. I felt completely alone.
Growing up is hard. As much as they're so cute and adorable at this age they have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders. They're like little people that way - so much to do so much to learn yet so little time. But as much as Kody has his moments I'm not always in tune with, when he doesn't want to wake up yet, doesn't want to get dressed or go to school; as much as he sometimes pouts in the bus window as we try to lighten his mood by frantically waving goodbye before the bus drives him away from us for the day, - every kid has those days. He's also started to make really funny observations, to giggle while wiping away our kisses, and to spontaneously sign "I love you" with his thumb, forefinger and pinky sometimes when he waves good bye. Most of the time, he is a happy child.
We can talk about all kinds of topics now. He asks me insightful questions about the world and expresses connections between his life and the lives of others he meets and learns about. And I can see myself in him - in his humor, his interests, and all his many aspirations. He's told us he wants to be a "cab driver, a man, and an astronaut" all in one breath. You just can't make this stuff up!
He's grown too heavy now to carry around, and yet I'm not ever really ready to put him down. Luckily though, he's not ready either. He helps me hold him with his tight hugs arms and legs wrapped around, and he kisses me on my cheek, and he tells me he loves me every day. And I feel prouder and prouder that he's my son no matter how scary this big bad world can be.
Thank you to all the staff and all the parents and all the beautiful children that have peppered his world with challenges and comforts. And here's to the hope that we will all grow and learn and face our fears as fast in the future.
