Goodbye Monroe Elementary School -- It's been a good run

Down the hall I saw Mrs. Schemmel, who I used to know as Mrs. Hoffart, walking back to her classroom. She was my daughter's first teacher at Monroe. In the office was Sandy, my former next door neighbor who used to bring home my children's homework when they stayed home sick with the flu. Mr. Carlson was there, the guy who  had been my children's gym teacher. Joanne, the nurse, was there, and Mrs. Substad, and Ms. Hammann, and Mr. Jaqua and Mrs. Wennes and Mr. Brad the custodian and Mr. Timm and Mr. Miller.

And there was my boy. Standing there, ready to cry.

I came to Monroe Elementary School today for a symbolic goodbye. I used to come to this school weekly to have lunch with my daughter. She loved it. I got a chance to meet all her friends and hang out with her during these years when kids spend more time with other people than they do with their parents.

I started off doing the same with my son. Eventually, I went less and less until this year -- I don't think I made it to more than a handful of lunches with him. And forget having lunch with my daughter. The second she got to Garfield, it was no longer part of the equation. However cool I thought I was, I was wrong.

Lunch today with my boy, then, would be a way of saying goodbye to a school that means so much to me. But when I arrived -- on time, mind you -- Sam had already had lunch. Fifth graders ate early because the fourth graders were gone for their end-of-the-year picnic. When I arrived, Sam was just exiting the lunch room. And when he saw me, his face ... It was easy to see he felt horrible.

The day had started out rough. My daughter had her graduation from eighth grade, and when it was over, my little girl -- who shared a locker with Celia Rodriguez on her first day of kindergarten, who groaned every mid-August when she learned she yet again wouldn't be in a class with besty Leah Stevenson, who broke her arm in first grade and had to learn to write left handed, who HATED Garfield, LOVED Dakota Meadows -- is officially a high school freshman. My baby. My little girl. The girl who will own my heart until the day I die is growing up, and their isn't a damn thing I can do about it. Try as i might, I can't force her to stay little, I can't keep her boxed into that image I have of her on her first day of school so many years ago. And I hate that. With each passing year, I have less control over the bad things that might happen to her, and that scares the hell out of me. The thought of her going to West next year is the last thing I want to think about. Where I should be thinking about potential and success, all I can think about sometimes are mean girls, bullies and long nights crying about something some boy did or didn't do. So yeah, today started out really ... well, crappy.

That's why I thought a nice lunch at Monroe would help me out. On the menu: omelets. I love 'em. Good deal for me. I got there a few minutes early, thinking I could hang out and just take in the sights and sounds of Monroe for a while. But after I signed in and started meandering toward the lunch room, I saw Sam come out, and wondered what went wrong.

Sam panicked. He knows I get emotional in times like this -- it's just who I am. So he was trying to figure out ways to make it better. He invited me outside to watch him and his buddies play football, or what they call football. It looks more like a hybrid where there are no teams, no real rules and no real point except to not run into the girls, who inexplicably hang out RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT ALL.

I told Sam to go play, I'll be fine. I had my sunglasses on, so he couldn't see what was going on in my eyes. He wouldn't look me in the eye, so I couldn't see what was going on in his. He jogged off, got into the mix, but didn't really take part. He just kept looking back at me to see if I was still there.

Eventually, I ducked back inside the school to leave. And for some reason, I couldn't walk out the door. I saw Emma's kindergarten teacher, and a few other people I knew. But mostly, I just saw the unfamiliar faces of random students. I realized then, that it was time to go. It wasn't my school anymore. This place now belongs to other kids, other doting parents, other families who will make just as many memories here as we did. I know I'll always be welcomed there, but it's time to go.

So I left, snapped a picture of the building and went back to work.

Then, around 2:45 p.m., my phone rang. It was Sam. He said he was sorry, and I could tell he was about to cry. He wanted us to have that last lunch, too. I told him not to worry, that all is well. When I get home tonight, we'll talk about how that last lunch didn't matter, how everything we've done here the last eight years could never be erased by a missed lunch.