It’s my daughter’s first day of tenth grade.  My baby is a high school sophomore.  That would be hard to believe, if she didn’t look so grown up.  And if she weren’t regularly driving.  She got her learner’s permit at the end of June, and so far, she’s a cautious but not overly fearful driver.  She’s determined not to be like me, hesitant to drive on the “big roads,” which I define as anything with an on-ramp.

Only two more such “first days,” and then she should be off to college.  Now that is truly hard to believe.

As September rolls around, I get a bit nostalgic for the years when my daughter didn’t go back to school.  Or for those years when school meant only preschool, three mornings a week.  I like to recall crisp, sunny afternoons, when she and I had nothing more pressing to do than to wander the neighborhood in search of signs of fall.  We’d collect acorns, pine cones, and brightly colored leaves.  Some we used for decoration; others for crafts.  (See here.)  After our walk, we might spread an old quilt on the lawn and spend a couple of unhurried hours lazing there, talking, reading and snacking.

Back then, there were no hard-to-find school supplies to track down, no quandaries over which binder is better, no piles of tedious forms to complete and sign.  No back-to-school nights for H and me.  We’d already met the teachers.  We knew them.  And we had absolute confidence that if our daughter needed extra help with the curriculum, we were experts in every field of study:  we knew our ABCs, we knew how to count, and how to spell our daughter’s name.

Afternoon on the lawn, September 2001.

This year, as D takes pre-calculus and chemistry, I’m glad I married someone whose intellectual strengths are my weaknesses, and vice versa.  Should our daughter need assistance in math and science, my husband will be on it.  I can advise on some aspects of history and English.  But we’ve learned to wait to be asked.  Both of us are very glad that we no longer have homework, and we have no interest in doing our daughter’s.

Thinker with a sippy cup:  D in the fall of 2001.

What’s harder is not offering up certain nuggets of unsolicited advice on non-homework topics.  Sometimes we know we should keep quiet because we need to let D live her life.  Many situations are only made worse by our meddling in them.  Other times, we realize that by saying one thing, we might prompt D to do the opposite.  She’s not a rebel.  But she is a teenager.