The Last Weeks of a PreSchooler

It's two weeks away and I'm already emotional about Cameron starting Kindergarten.  It just feels like the end of an era. The mornings of playing football, building train tracks around the house, and mocking Morton on Mario Kart are going to be whittled down to an unacceptable amount.  Cam and I took a father son day this past week where we dominated the pre-school haunts of northern Austin.  The day is winding down and we are sitting on the steps of a pool talking about what we are going to grab for dinner on the way home.  Cam looks at me in all earnestness and says "I just don't want this day to end."  And that's exactly how I feel too. That's how I feel about this Kindergarten thing.  It's an ending that we can't avoid.  I look at my already too independent son and know that these days will soon be a memory.  Never in my life will I know another person the way I knew pre-school Cam.  I know the way that dude thinks.  And I know in days to come he is going to stop sharing all those thoughts with me.  And it makes me overwhelmingly sad.  I am positive I will miss these days.

Cam did a soccer camp this past week at the YMCA.  Whenever I drop him off at stuff like this I am struck by how little he is.  And how brave he is.  Cam has always been a pretty anxious and careful kid. And he's never taken separation / goodbyes easily.  So I can see the stress in him as he walks into camp.  He used to put his hands in his mouth and freeze.  Now he takes a big breath and puts his hands on his hips, like a nervous super-hero in an oversized backpack.  And he walks straight into this world of chaos by himself.  On the first day of camp there is a wrist-band mishap, and he ends up playing volleyball with 9 to 16 year-olds.  That night he is giddy.  He was befriended by some 12-year-old girls who tell him "he is there new best friend."  He said that he looked for them at lunch and couldn't find them.  But he "likes sitting by himself."  He also has a bag of chips with him, still sealed, that they were given that day.  He says that he wasn't able to open it and the counselors told them they needed to do it on their own.  I learned that volleyball coaches are hard core about independence in snack consumption. 

Cam actually made it to soccer the following day and again comes home super excited.  He gleefully told Mindy that he has a surprise for her; he has "found" something at camp.  With a big smile on his face he reaches into his backpack and pulls out... red boxer shorts.  My son has stolen someone else's underwear and is super fired up about it.  He paints himself as more of a scavenger than thief, saying that he found them by his clothes at the swimming pool.  But I'm not ruling out the origins of a fetish.  And one can only imagine the conversation happening at home from the other side of this transaction.  Better to come home with options in the underwear department than none at all.

He took Wednesday off from camp for the father-son day and there are two important things to note here. First, Cameron has basically mastered the game of golf.  And when I say mastered, I mean he has already learned how to take an inordinate amount of time to line up his shot, throw his club across the course, threaten to quit while he just keeps playing, conduct dubiously favorable score keeping, and celebrate like a mad-man when he gets a hole in one.  There must be something about golf that just intrinsically elicits all of this.  There really is no other way to play.  Second, even one day of hanging around with pre-teen girls makes you work the phrase "oh my god" into every other sentence.  It was like playing putt-putt with the plastics from Mean Girls.

The next two days Cam finished out soccer camp.  Friday after camp, Mindy notices another foreign item in his back pack.  She cautiously reaches in and pulls out... a medal engraved with "Camper of the Week."  Apparently the Y selects one camp member whom they feel has really stood out in a positive way.  From the hundreds of kids at this camp they selected our little five year old.  I think they made an excellent choice.  I know that Cam is a special kid, but most every parent feels that way about their kids.  It really makes me so proud and happy that on that day somebody else saw something special in him.  I don't know if it was the dual sport talent, the spotty attendance, or the humility displayed by returning dirty stolen boxers; but something stood out.  And I guess in all this is the good and the bad of him starting school.  However hard it is to say goodbye to these days and let-go some of our control, I'm so excited to see who he is going to become.  I'm excited to see how he evolves under the guidance of other people who will provide so many different experiences and perspectives.  I think that Cameron is going to flourish out there.  So watch out world and keep an eye on your underwear, because Cameron Graves is stepping out.