Well, that’s it. Ruby is out of pre-school. And although yesterday was her last day, they held the closing ceremonies two days earlier, on Monday evening. Why they decided to give everyone their certificates and then have them go to school for two more days I’ll never know, but that’s how they did it. Maybe there was nothing good on TV on Monday, but all the teachers were super excited about the Dallas reboot last night? Who knows?
Regardless of when they were held, the closing ceremonies were very cute. My mother came; my wife’s mother came; my wife’s sister and her family came; we were a big crowd. As we filed into the room for the presentation, it was clear that we were not all going to fit in one row. As the family videographer, I grabbed a seat on the aisle and got my iPhone ready to record.
Ruby’s class marched in and sang several songs for us, demonstrating the progress they had made over the past year in the areas of rhythm, pitch, and general confusion. Ruby was the loudest one as usual, although she seemed to be very distracted by a band-aid on her finger, so she may not have been at her absolute loudest. Even more distracted was the boy a few kids down from her who was clearly doing the pee-pee dance like a pro. His dance got wilder and wilder, the way you might imagine a mad scientist doing the pee-pee dance, until finally the singing finished and his father rushed up and took him to the restroom.
After the singing was over all of the kids got certificates of completion and there was a lot of thanking going around, for the teacher, the founders, the head of the school, the parents, etc. But then, when that was over, we got to the big surprise announcement! The head of the school was being promoted to the head of all the schools (there are three of them in the area), and so was leaving at the end of the year, which was now. But not only that, Ruby’s teacher was being promoted to the new head of this school! I knew we had the best teacher in the school and now we have empirical evidence to prove it! Boo-yah! Suck it, other parents who thought they had the best teacher!
When it was all finished, we got another surprise, which was that it was not all finished at all. We were directed outside for the twice postponed and assumed cancelled MayDay celebration. Now, MayDay is the first of May, and here we were somewhere in the first half of June, and it was getting a little late. But I suppose JuneEvening celebration doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
The kids came skipping out of the school singing a MayDay song and danced around a Maypole which had been erected on the lawn near the playground. They held streamers and decorated the pole as they circled it, until they were instructed to reverse directions and undecorate the pole so that the next class could have a turn once they were done receiving their certificates.
When it was all over we decided to celebrate by going to Friendly’s for dinner, but since everyone else had the same idea 3 minutes before we did, we decided to leave and go to Al’s French Fry’s instead. All in all, it was a very successful evening.
After it was really all over and we were home in bed, we set our alarm Edward to go off at the normal time, because we still had two more days of school left. And now even those are done. Driving to school yesterday morning, Ruby held her class picture in her lap and read each of her classmates’ names aloud and then said a few sentences about each of them. It was very cute and it mad me a little sad. It also reminded me a lot of the last episode of every season of Survivor when whoever is left has to read the names of everyone they voted out and say something about them before they burn their torches. Only this was all Ruby’s doing and was not prompted by the producers, which made it all the more sweet.
As I picked her up for the last time, she seemed ready to come home, but I wasn’t ready to let it all go. I stalled as long as I could, pretending that I needed to check the classroom one last time to make sure we weren’t forgetting anything. But I knew we weren’t. And finally I had to say goodbye too. Goodbye to a chapter in Ruby’s life, and in mine. She has grown so much since that first day when none of us knew what to expect when we dropped her off. I’m sad to see it end, but I will always appreciate how great it was. And who knows, maybe Edward will go there someday and we can start it all over again…
