The Ephemeral Museum of Childhood: Cataloging What Remains After June

Hi!

I was particularly struck this week by

Ruth Whippman

’s excellent New York Times piece on the epidemic of loneliness among boys has been a hot topic on my school’s WhatsApp chats.

As the mother of a young boy, I’m simultaneously gut-punched and grateful that we’re finally having this discussion. “For every right-wing tough guy urging his crying son to “man up,” there’s a voice from the left telling him that to express his concerns is to take airtime away from a woman or someone more marginalized. The two are not morally equivalent, but to boys, the impact can often feel similar.”

We owe it to our boys to do better.

Speaking of children: school’s out for summer. I spent the week hugging people I barely know and holding back tears I didn’t know I had. It’s all very confusing, and I’m pretty sure I know why.

The end of the school year evokes such deep emotions because it contains within its festive, ice-cream-party-punctuated conclusion the very experience of living and dying.

You begin wide-eyed and hopeful, everything fresh and new. In time, the fanfare gives way to routine. Your days become structured by external forces, which you find alternately comforting and oppressive. You show up each morning to learn lessons that stretch your cognitive and creative capacities. You build stamina, forge friendships, make mistakes, and navigate conflict. You try and fail, compete and win, achieving things you never thought you could.

There’s inspiration everywhere if you know how to look for it, which you do, unless you’re distracted, which you sometimes are. This place is stimulating. These people are, too.

In time, you discover your likes and dislikes. You move into and out of friendships. You put stickers on your water bottle only to watch them peel off and dissolve after multiple washes. But the fuzzy sticker residue doesn’t look bad. The water bottle looks… capable. So do you.

Somewhere along the way, you outgrow your favorite shoes. Bummer. But also cool that you’re growing. You hadn’t even noticed your own evolution until your big toe poked a hole your well-worn Nike.

Change is evident in the most unexpected places.

As the end draws near, you wonder why you spent so much of your precious time in this place worried about silly things like homework assignments and birthday party invites and what other people were doing and thinking. It dawns on you, with limited time left, that none of this mattered. What mattered was how you loved — people, experiences, lessons — and how you received love in return.

What mattered was how courageously you said yes to the mystery.

The drawings & papers & notebooks pouring out of a paper grocery bag don’t even begin to encapsulate this. Still, you cherish them. Yesterday’s headlines are today’s artifacts. You cling to them, despite knowing they’ll end up in a closet, dusty and forgotten.

It mattered so much and not at all. It was everything and nothing. Soon it will all vanish into thin air.

More fanfare. Gifts. Cards. Pajama Day.

But the end isn’t loud. It’s quiet and solitary. Endings usually are. In an instant, your teacher is not your teacher, your class is not your class. You watch from the backseat as the school, and then the soccer field, and then the street fade into the rear view of spacetime. Before you lies only the wild unknown.

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My most heartfelt congratulations to the graduates. And to the teachers. And to the parents.

As I stood in the kitchen last night, unpacking lunchboxes one last time and sorting through piles of drawings that fall somewhere between mementos and recyclables, I did something odd. I stopped what I was doing and patted myself on the back. Left arm over torso, gently tapping my right shoulder. “You did it,” I whispered. “Good job.”