At 7:40 yesterday morning, Tyler bolted out the door with his hair slicked down, creature shirt with googly eyes, light-up sneakers, and dinosaur backpack. Doug and I followed, I with camera, Doug with camcorder, and Eva trailing behind us, barefoot, wild-haired, arms and legs poking out of her Dora nightgown.
“Hurry, Eva,” I yelled from the top of the driveway. “I think I hear the bus coming! Don’t you want to wave at your brother through the window?”
“I don’t WANT to wave at Tyler,” she whined, face still puffy from sleep. “I want to play pbskids.com!”
Tyler ran about in circles, knowing he was about to embark on his first day of kindergarten and his first official ride in a yellow school bus, but not really having any inkling about what it all meant.
When we finally heard the bus roar up the street, Doug flicked on the camcorder, and scenes imprinted on its memory card flashed through my mind. Taking Tyler home from the hospital. Putting him down in his basinet that first night and worrying he’d forget how to breathe. That first beaming smile, those first words, those first tottering steps. How he kicks up his legs and laughs when he’s riding downhill on a bike. How he scoops up daddy longlegs with his hands and watches them crawl across his scraped knees and elbows, then falls asleep at night under a blanket of stuffed animals. How sweet and peaceful his face looks in the gleam of his nightlight after he falls asleep.
His growing up has been a journey, and through it all we’d see that yellow school bus rumbling past our living room window. So many times I’d told him, “Some day when you’re really big, you’ll go on the school bus, too!” And suddenly, here we were.
When the bus pulled up, Tyler forged ahead without so much as a good-bye, and he charged to the back of the bus. I went in after him, escorted him to the front, and delivered a final good-luck kiss. He couldn’t even see over the top of the seat. It almost looked like the seat would open up and swallow him whole.
As I emerged from the bus, stifling tears, Eva was wailing, “I want to go on the bus with Tyler! Mama, tell the man I want to go, too!”
“Next year, Eva,” I promised. “Boys and girls go to kindergarten when they’re five, and you’re still four.”
“I don’t WANT to be four!” she cried. “I want to be FIVE RIGHT NOW!”
I didn’t have time to argue. Anna was waking up in her crib, and I needed to get her ready for a doctor’s appointment. As much as I cherished my last fleeting moments with the girls before heading back off to work next week, I was mentally preparing myself for another day of wiping up puddles, quelling tantrums and scrambling behind them, picking up random objects in their wake. The three of us headed back inside.
Doug snapped off the camcorder, and for the first time, I noticed that he looked even more forlorn than I did. I was certain it was hitting him all at that moment—how empty the house would seem without Tyler, how quickly time unraveled his babyhood and transformed him into a boy right before our eyes, and how terrifying it was to blink, for fear we’d find him standing before us a teenager.
Eva interrupted my thoughts as she jumped up and tried to snatch the camcorder out of Doug’s hand. “Take a picture of ME, Daddy!” she begged.
“Are you OK?” I asked him. “It looks like you’re going to cry, too!”
“I might,” he answered, a bit dazed and shaking his head. “There’s still two left!”