In kindergarten, the art room always smelled like Tempera paint. Music class was awash with the clatter of rhythm sticks. At recess, our calloused hands gripped monkey bars as our little velcro shoes dangled below. On colder days, we huddled beneath the awning. Then, we would line up single-file, reluctant to go back inside, our playground games coming to a transient end. We labeled basins and deltas from plateaus in “science”, read books about talking rabbits in waistcoats in “language arts”, and counted with base ten blocks in “math”. On especially good days, we would take field trips to petting zoos with our scribbly name tags and crumpled paper bag lunches.
While getting ready for elementary school, we watched squeaky cartoons. We climbed the steep stairs of the bus as the current radio pop song fell beneath the chatter of our classmates. We watched neighborhoods pass by, we watched commuters driving to work, we watched street signs and realized we didn’t have to sound them out anymore. The end of these years was marked by field day, which distinctively commenced with red, white, and blue popsicles melting onto our grass-stained knees and the hot blacktop.
Come middle school, our lockers stopped being for mittens and toys as they were now occupied by textbooks and binders. We independently walked the halls from class-to-class while wondering what treats our parents packed in our lunches. We went to Halloween and Valentine’s dances only to be in bed by nine. We had a taste of freedom but never once doubted the sureness of home.
While high school admittedly had a challenging start, we found our places. Now, we were high schoolers and the finish line seemed more within reach. Four years slipped through our fingers with every football victory and homecoming dance. We went from struggling with our lockers to learning to drive, and then we found ourselves tediously filling out our college applications. Every essay draft, every precariously-typed email asking for a letter of recommendation, every anxious refresh on our application status pages, paid off. We are now proud Redhawks and Buckeyes and Zips.
We look back fondly on those years, yet one day you will look back on the next chapter with the same rose-tinted gaze. Nostalgia is proof your life is worth living. It is proof that good memories will find you again and again. It may feel like you’ll never get to experience something as meaningful and significant, and while wholly valid to feel that way, know that good days will come again. This August you will be shopping for plasticware, desk lamps, and string lights. You will see a new generation excitedly selecting boxes of crayons, blunt-tip scissors, and glue sticks as their tired parents follow graciously behind, school supply list in hand. You may find yourself wanting to whisper to them, make sure to eat your field day popsicle quickly, you’ll be sticky for the rest of the afternoon, or in a couple of months, you’ll be reading the list yourself.
As for you, you will take the first step onto university campus. You will spend the first night in your dorm room. You will clock into your first full-time job. You will get the keys to your first apartment and cook your first meal away from home. You will be okay. In the fall, a child will be taking that first big step onto the bus and turning to wave to their parents.
While that child will celebrate their first 100 days, share a Goldfish cracker with a girl in their class and make a lifelong friend, and learn their way through winding, art-filled hallways, you will have attended your first college football match, gone to your first (real) party, and learned that you can and will be okay away from home.
Your presence is so welcome, your value ineffable. You are worthy of wonderful, golden memories, may you find them throughout each coming year.