Today is the first day of school for most kids (and parents) in Lake Highlands, the beginning of unlimited possibilities. Twenty-one years ago, I dropped my first child off at Kindergarten, entrusting her into the hands of dedicated, caring teachers who promised to love her and mold her into a bright and capable young woman. Three more Tolers stair-stepped quickly right behind.
This week my daughter, Laura, begins teaching fourth grade at Highlander School. She’ll be Miss Toler where she first enrolled, and I have first-day-jitters all over again. It isn’t the same as the old days, back when Kathy Bankhead and I first paired up to serve as room mothers – my first volunteer gig in LH. (She recently finished a stint as president of the LHHS PTA.)
This time I’m playing the role of supportive mom from afar. In some ways, this is much tougher.
To all of you who have butterflies about this week – about how your child will do, if he’s prepared, if others will be kind to her – I say: I’m right there with you.
And to all of you nervous young parents, anxious as I was twenty years ago – I say: take heart, she loves them already.
