It is something of a time of changes for my daughter, Ms. 8. She is approaching the end of her fifth-grade year, and in the small school district where she has been and is still enrolled, the end of the year marks the end of her eligibility for several programs in which she has participated for several years, now. One of them is the after-school children’s program at one of the two churches adjacent to the elementary school campus (it’s the rural Texas Hill Country, after all). Another is the after-school STEM program at our local library, which has introduced her to concepts in engineering and in the natural world (thanks to the kindly participation of local park rangers) that she likely would not have encountered otherwise.

In both cases, other opportunities are presenting themselves to her; if she continues to be involved with the church, she will be doing so in the more…focused and intentional youth group, and there are additional programs on offer at the library in time to come. (I may be presiding over one such, in fact, and possibly more than one. But more about that later if there is something to report.) But in both cases, too, there is a loss of familiarity and comfort, a motion away from something known for some time and towards something not quite as well known (although in a small town, there are few secrets).

Perhaps of more moment is that, at the end of fifth grade, she will leave a school where she has studied for several years, moving to a new one being built. Ostensibly, she will be among its first students and the first class to have the new facility for all three years of middle school (sixth through eighth grades, here, as currently constituted). Again, while there is some excitement for moving on to new things, and there is more excitement for being one of the first to inhabit a wholly new space, there is also some sadness in leaving behind the comfort of the known and familiar, as well as some shock in going from one of the leading figures on campus to having to reestablish and realign herself among her peers.

(That she does so after having had a final concert for her first year in band cancelled for eminently stupid reasons does not help matters. I do not blame her directors; I know they have acted as they have been directed to do by local administrators. I chafe that there is nothing to be done about it, and even raising much of a ruckus will cause more problems than it could ever solve, as experience taught me that I did not understand until long after it would have helped.)

I know well that such things are to be expected–praised, even. If nothing else, having ensured that my daughter is moving on to another school, another grade, another set of groups means that I have not yet utterly failed her. More importantly, it means that she is continuing to grow and become more and more the excellent person I know she has it in her to be. And I know that I (and she, because I am only writing this because her comments brought such things to mind for me) am more sentimental about such things than is likely justified; it is, after all, only fifth grade, nothing that allows new privileges or the freer exercise of individual rights. But there is something about rites of passage that compels some rumination, and not all of it is happy; there is gain, yes, and growth, but there is also loss, and things have been good even if it is time to set them aside in favor of other things yet.

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