Kindergarten-Bound With a Kind Heart
Reflecting on Maggie's fifth birthday
Our firstborn daughter, Magnolia, turned five-years-old over the weekend. Family and friends gathered on Saturday for a Rainbow Mermaid birthday party in a house that look more like the scene of a Lisa Frank factory explosion than a properly ordered home. It was fantastic.
We continued celebrating Maggie on her actual birthday on Sunday, and then I left on a plane late Sunday night for gatherings with co-workers in downtown Chicago this week.
If you’ve been around the newsletter much at all in the last five years, you’ll know that every year around the girls’ birthdays, I like to reflect on who they are and what it is like to parent them. You can find past iterations here:
Sweet Magnolia: Reflections on my daughter’s third birthday1
Weak for Those We Love: Reflecting on my daughter’s second birthday
Here we are. Maggie is five, which also means COVID was in full swing five years ago now. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here before, but her birthday is April 6th. This is week before her due date because the doctor was growing nervous that fathers would be kept out of hospitals for births. So she had Susie induced a week earlier than Maggie was due.
That means that some “COVID babies” as Maggie and her peers are often called, are on their way to kindergarten in the fall.
COVID Kids Hit Kindergarten
We’ve always thought Maggie is a pretty smart kid, but of course we’re biased. So when we applied for Maggie to be considered for a couple of highly-rated magnet schools in our area, we weren’t sure if she would get in or not. Part of the application and acceptance process was an assessment exercise with teachers and staff in the schools. Knowing Maggie to be as shy as she is around strangers, we weren’t sure if she would answer whatever questions were asked of her, even if she knew the answers.
We were a bit shocked when she was accepted to the best elementary school in the state of Tennessee. Woo! Go Maggie!
We shrugged to one another, bemused, and said, “I guess she opened up and talk to them?!”
What we know now is that Maggie has some academically rigorous years ahead of her. She will be stretched and molded in some pretty profound ways, and we are excited, even if a bit nervous ourselves. I’m sure I’ll take some time to reflect more on this as the beginning of the next school year approaches.
Big Feelings, Deep Caring
As I have reflected just a little bit on what we have ahead of us as Maggie heads off to kindergarten next year, I have thought about how this environment will not let her smarts set her apart. The school is, theoretically, filled with some of the brightest kids in the area. Getting good grades will be an expectation, not a mark of distinction.
What I think makes Maggie so special is her unnatural kindness, her deep care for others that is already so evident.
She might be a bright kid, but what makes me so happy is that her light emits a special kind of warmth that benefits others.
To be clear, I have never known a five-year-old as well as I know Maggie (obviously). But Maggie is the most empathetic child I’ve ever known. She’s more empathetic than I could imagine any five-year-old being.
She cares and feels so deeply for other people (and animals) that she is brought to tears at things as simple as friends who forget and leave items at our house when they leave to go home—she’s usually concerned they’ll desperately miss their dishes or water bottles. She celebrates others and their accomplishments. She has a deep and abiding love for Helga the Turtle at our local park’s wilderness station.
Her awareness of and care for other people is unbelievable to me. She is always observing how others are feeling, taking the temperature of the room, making sure everyone is cared for.2
I guess what I mean to say is that most five-year-olds, and kids in general, are usually pretty selfish and self-interested. That’s understandable—they’re small children. This is to be expected. And Maggie can be this way, too, of course.
But what I love about Maggie is that she couldn’t be more interested in the care and well-being of other people, and I am often floored by how much she cares for others.
More broadly, Maggie just feels a lot—she’s got a lot of emotions. This is obviously common for little girls. But I think what amazes me about her is that she is more emotionally self-aware and emotionally intelligent than a lot of adults I know. She can sense the emotional atmosphere of a room with tremendous speed and accuracy.
Now our Maggie is five-years-old, kindergarten-bound with a kind heart. She feels deeply, loves hard, and has an awareness and love for other people that I envy. I can already see this leading to some heartache and deep hurt down the road, and we’ll navigate those when they come. But for now, I can’t wait to help her thrive as she tries to help others thrive.
I think this is easily the best thing I’ve ever written, fwiw. I cried re-reading it while putting this post together.
I imagine one day this will manifest in some unhealthy, people-pleasing ways, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
My granddaughter turns 5 in July and is a Covid baby. She also starts kindergarten this fall. I can’t believe how fast time goes.
Enjoy this time. It passes so quickly. (I know. I'm a father of four, all of which are now adults. I'm also a grandfather of four, and their young lives are passing in a blur.)