20190817.0430

My daughter, the inestimable Ms. 8, will start school on Monday, 19 August. Her mother and I attended a meet-the-teacher and Kindergarten orientation to help prepare for it; the session was a good one, and I am pleased that we attended. We learned a lot, and some of it still seems to be processing. In a small way, it reminds me of what it was like to be a student, and I look at Ms. 8 with a bit more...I'm not really sure what...as I consider what she will start to deal with on Monday, what she will be facing for the next dozen years or more.
I've had some occasion to reflect on my school days recently. I have been reminded of how pre-Bilbo Bagginsian I have been for most of my life; I have never really been an exciting person, focused mostly on school and work and coming home between them and after. It has meant I've had little trouble, of course, and I appreciate that; things have been straitened enough without the costs of redressing trouble of one sort or another. But it has also meant there have been things I have missed and cannot reclaim, connections I have not made or have allowed to lapse that I have needed to develop and maintain.
How much of such distance Ms. 8 will have from things, I am not sure. I've noted, I believe, that she does not appear to have many of the same hangups that I did and still too much do. Even at the meet-the-teacher session, when she was clearly overstimulated and began to withdraw into herself, she talked with other children and made efforts to make herself pleasant. It seemed to work, at least to some extent. It would not have done so with me; I have never been able to conceal well what I feel, so that it has been obvious when I've been dissatisfied even when I've tried to demonstrate otherwise.
I look forward to her having an easier time, perhaps not in her coursework, but with her peer group than I did mine. (I did pretty well in class, far less so outside it.) I think she will get the better end of the bargain if she does so. But I will continue to love and support her, in any event. Ms. 8 is my beloved daughter; I cannot do otherwise, nor do I want to.