We are crossing the street when I see an oncoming car and reflexively extend my hand to grab my daughter’s.
After we reach our destination, I continue holding her slender fingers in my palm, our arms intertwined at the elbow. She is out of harm’s way, but I choose not to let go.
Each day this week, as I am driving her to and from school in the final days before summer break, I have been slowly coming to terms with the reality that these are the last times I will be shuttling a middle schooler around town. High school — with its rigorous college prep classes and endless extracurriculars — is on the horizon.
I had been so distracted by the end-of-year crush of activities that I had allowed this fact to hide out in the back of my brain. Reaching for her hand gave me a jolt.
We are at yet another milestone moment in our journey together. Soon, she may bristle at the notion that she needs my help to safely navigate the world. She has reached the end of middle school, and I am wondering where did the time go?
Similar bittersweet feelings seem to be engulfing many of my friends whose children are marking the same milestone. Photos of our once chubby-cheeked kindergartners, wearing tutus and soccer cleats, keep popping up in group chats. Maybe this reflection is a way to hold on to the past while knowing the time is coming when we need to let go. Or at least loosen our grip.
The middle school years feel like the last phase of your child’s life when you can pretend that your little one isn’t growing up. When you can still buy them Lego sets and coloring books, and they’ll still play with you. These are the last years when their outlook on the world wavers between childish innocence and more clear-eyed reality.
For many adults who look back at this time in their lives, a delicate in-between age, this period of self-discovery is remembered mostly for how awful it was.
Experts tell us that middle school is when many kids start thinking about bigger things and start worrying about how they are perceived. But they are open to the world and don’t have fully formed opinions. One of the strongest desires they possess is to avoid humiliation — at all costs. Of course, when you’re growing up, there is always a healthy dose of humiliation lurking.
I’m among the minority of people who loved middle school, though I’m not entirely sure why. After all, my closest friendships were not forged in middle school. This wasn’t the age when I developed a passion for writing.
So what have I been holding so dear about that time of life?
Maybe it was the sense of freedom. Maybe it was learning to think for myself. Maybe it was successfully navigating the social minefields.
My daughter and I have watched at least a half-dozen movies about middle school over the years, and the storylines have a lot of similarities. There are the haves and have-nots; the bullies and the bullied; the popular kids and the striving-to-be-popular kids; the kids with hearts of gold and the ones with hearts of stone.
From these films, we learned that hardship builds character, that self-reflection can lead to transformation, or that middle school can be a treacherous detour on the way to something better.
Middle school is a time filled with choices and experimentation. It is the moment when tweens begin the process of figuring out who they are, though they may be years away from knowing for sure.
The end of middle school is when they begin to put all of those hard lessons into practice.
My daughter said she and her friends are planning to “lock in” for high school, which is Gen Z speak for focusing and dedicating themselves to a goal. They are also planning a “glow up,” which is Gen Z speak for making a significant transformation in appearance and maturity.
At home, many of those transformations are happening behind a bedroom door that is now frequently closed. We share a love of music, but lately the soundtrack of her life has diverged to a separate playlist. She asks me often if this is the summer I will finally teach her to drive. And she tells me that she and her buddy are plotting to get summer jobs at the ice cream parlor when they turn 15.
I greet my daughter’s enthusiasm about high school and official teendom with an encouraging nod and knowing smile.
Middle school will soon be done, robbing me of my little girl. But there is so much more to come in her journey and in our journey together.
There surely will be rocky roads to cross. But I will make sure she knows that my hand will always be extended — for her to hold whenever she needs it.
Read more on the Real Life blog (www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/) and find Nedra on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and Twitter (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.
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