It was a bog standard August Monday morning — brighter than it was hot, but with an unmistakable promise of soul-melting heat to come — and The Observer was up and out the door before 7 a.m. It was the first day at Little Rock Central High School, and, as I’ve done every non-COVID year since 2012, I was taking my daughter to school.

In previous years, I’ve looked forward to this particular August tradition and everything that accompanies it. Between the clothes shopping, the obsessing over which notebook and which pens to get, the excitement of getting her schedule a few days before, and the incomparable relief that comes with realizing you’ve made it through another summer without going insane, few events on a parental calendar are rarely so fun and exciting for dad and daughter alike.

This year, however, promised to be different. She was starting her senior year, and I’d been quietly dreading it all summer, purely for selfish reasons. This would likely be the last time I took her to her first day of school, ending a fun little ritual that has spanned nearly two decades of my life. She plans to leave the state for college, and, while I wholeheartedly support that decision given the current governor’s attacks on LGBTQ+ students, thinking about her starting college 1,200 miles away next year added to the emotional weight I was feeling on that Monday morning.

As she chatted my ear off on the drive to school, I couldn’t help but picture the 4-year-old version of her doing the same 13 years ago as we walked to Jefferson Elementary for the first day of pre-K. The yellow-and-white flowered dress with pink buttons and a matching pink backpack had long since given way to a black T-shirt sporting the band Pierce the Veil, baggy pants and a de rigueur clear backpack, but the blond-headed kid beside was still as gentle-hearted, opinionated and self-confident as she ever was. I took a bit of comfort in that, even as I choked back a rogue tear. 

First-day memories continued to pop up as we drove. There was the first day of kindergarten, when she only wanted me to walk her as far as the front doors so she could walk to her classroom by herself, “like a big girl.” I thought about her first day of third grade, when she told me she wanted me to only walk her as far as the sidewalk in front of the school, then changed her mind when we got there and held my hand as we walked the rest of the way to the building. There were the strange first days of seventh and eighth grade, when COVID stole our tradition and the prospect of continued remote classes made everyone feel a bit rattlesnakey. And I thought about the first day of ninth grade, which feels like it happened barely a month ago, when it seemed impossible that my little 13-year-old could ever navigate a school so large.

By the time we got to Central and into the cafeteria for the Senior Breakfast, an annual tradition where seniors and their guests eat a continental-ish breakfast served by the PTA, I found myself unable to put my feelings about the whole thing into words. I was happy and proud and excited for her future and all of the great things I know she’ll do. I was also sad and wistful about how the whole thing felt like the beginning of the end of a major chapter in both of our lives, and I was more than a little scared about the state of the world she would soon be entering.

John F. Kennedy once said, “To have a child is to give fate a hostage.” I’ve always hated this quote because it felt like an unnecessarily cynical worldview. Yet, in that moment, I started to understand it just a bit. 

Every baby bird eventually has to fly away from the nest, and your job as a parent is to do the best you know how to prepare them not just for the leap from the safety of the nest but for whatever they might encounter in the skies once they are aloft. But no matter how much you prepare them, no matter how extensive your teaching might be, you’ll never cover everything. It’s just not possible. You still have to send them out into the world and hope for the best, however, and that is absolutely terrifying to contemplate.

I think she could tell that I was struggling to process the emotions of the moment. She leaned over and put her head on my shoulder in between bites of scrambled eggs.

“I love you, Papa,” she said.

It was perfect timing. I leaned over and put my head against hers. 

“I love you, too, boo boo.”