Now I know how Al Pacino’s character Michael Corleone felt in the dreadful “The Godfather Part III” movie, when he lamented about thinking he was out of the family “business” but was being pulled back in.
My grandson is about to start kindergarten. Whether my grandson lives with me, or I live with my grandson, is a matter of interpretation, but one thing is clear: all the same worries I had when my children went to school have bubbled up to the surface again.
I worry about him fitting in. I worry about him fitting in too snugly. Will there be a bully in the classroom? Will he fall in love with learning or be one of those kids who always seem to find school challenging?
These are just the Cliffs Notes of some of the issues I have already lived through with my own children. I thought I had run my race and I was done with all that — God, on the other hand, had a different opinion. And as any parent, or grandparent in my case, knows, your kids’ issues are your issues.
I know my grandson is having his own mixed emotions about the whole thing. He has new shoes and a sparkling new Avengers backpack. Last week he got a high and tight haircut and is now looking every inch the kindergartener he will become. A few Sundays ago, my grandson and I went on a little self-guided tour of his new school after Mass. I showed him the exterior of the place, the rooms his own mom went to when she was little, and most importantly, showed him the special playground reserved just for kindergarteners. I could detect a disturbance in the force. As inviting as I tried to make things out to be, it was still the unknown to my grandson, and it bothered him.
It made me think of my own first day of school. It was a rite of passage. I had spent six marvelous years living at home with everyone else either at school or work. Just me and my mom. It was a world of grilled cheese sandwiches and watching TV and visiting my grandparents. Life was good. Then it all came to a crashing halt.
It was the smell of new corduroy pants, a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse lunch box, and the first grade. I was escorted to school, as per our family tradition, not by my mother or father, but by the oldest sibling in the school, my sister Helen Mary. If I said anything on that long walk of one whole block to school, I do not remember. I do remember the feeling of uncertainty and the unknown that I believe my little grandson is feeling now.
In reality, my grandson is infinitely better prepared for kindergarten than I was when I entered the first grade. He’s had a couple years of semi-structured daycare/preschool, resulting in being able to read simple sentences and calculate rudimentary addition and subtraction. When I walked through those doors of St. Elisabeth School, escorted by my big sister, I could count to 10 and recite the alphabet — if allowed to sing it.
Besides conjuring memories, good and bad, of my own initiation into “higher” education, my grandson standing on the same precipice conjures memories of just how connected I am to Catholic education. Call it tradition, heritage or whatever you like, but being educated in a parish school has been part of my bloodline for well over a century. So, to that end, every week in my family was Catholic education week.
I cannot vouch for my three-times great-grandparents since back when they were of primary school age the Catholic faith was illegal in Ireland, but since the days when their progeny came to America, the line of Catholic primary education has remained unbroken.
That did not make us all great Catholics. It did not produce an unbroken line of unbroken people who did not always need God’s redeeming grace to see them through their lives. What it did provide, though, was a foundation upon which a Catholic faith could be built. Just as there are many mansions in heaven, there are many different Catholic structures here on earth, but many of them are the result of the blueprints found at parish schools.
According to the online Catholic encyclopedia, “The word tradition (Greek paradosis) in the ecclesiastical sense, refers sometimes to the thing (doctrine, account, or custom) transmitted from one generation to another.”
Fancy words for a boy with an Avengers backpack to grasp. But with help from his mom, his grandparents, and guidance from the Holy Spirit, may this first step of his journey lead him to the ultimate truth of Jesus and salvation.
