Very gently, tenderly, with some small confusion in her voice, the Girl Child tries to help me confront some of the inevitable facts of life.

I took the Girl Child and the Boy Child out for a drive on Sunday. We drove some of the back roads in Fairfield, CT, the next town over. Fairfield is lovely. Lots of old houses.

The Girl Child starts kindergarten come the autumn. She has been singing, “I’m going to kindergarten, kindergarten here I come. They’ve got a lot of higher education there and I’m gonna get me some”. Great excitement, you see. She knows that she is going to have homework. We were so informed and in turn we warned her. We told her that she would not need a desk yet because she would be doing her homework at the kitchen table where we could keep an eye on her. Really, what kind of homework do they give a kindergartner anyway?

So, back to Sunday and our ride. I spot a for sale sign on an old Federal style house along with a hot pink tag sale sign (link to real estate site, if you want to see what the house looked like). I should have a bumper sticker: “Warning, I brake for this kind of crap and I pull over and park on the side of the road as safely as I can but you should still be careful.” Long, but safety is job one, you know. Anyway, we pull through the gates and wander about. There it is. An old school room desk and chair. The chair has the initials bored school children carved on the seat with their pocket knives when you could still bring knives to school. The desk has a hole for the old ink well. It was perfectly sized for a small child. It was also only $25. I didn’t even try to negotiate. I just asked them to mark it sold while I dashed home to obtain a check. They were happy to hold it.

While driving back to the house, the kids and I had the following conversation:

Boy Child: Girl Child, IÂ’m gonna be sad when you go to king-a-garden. You not gonna be there with me at home anymore.

Me: And IÂ’m going to be sad, too.

GC: Why, pappa? YouÂ’re at work anyway.

Me: Because IÂ’m not ready yet for you to grow up and it seems like you going to school is the first step in your growing up.

GC: [tone: puzzled, tentative, and gentle] Pappa, you know that time has to change, right? I mean, I have to go to school and grow up, right?

And there you have it. Even my daughter realizes this. Its just me who wants to hang on to the past. She was very sweet about it, though.

And she loves her new desk. It has a dark varnish on it that she notes will go well with her skin tone when she has a tan. We got it up to her room and she immediately put some paper in it.

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