Last first day, last kid, last photo

Many of you shunted off your kids to school last week, no doubt taking that annual first day of school photo.

They’re hardly new – I have drawers full of them (pictures, not small children).

Some of ours are lies, actually the second day of school photo, because Mommy was too stressed to get her game together. In one, a neighbour’s cat is lazily crossing in front of the posed kids. In a few, everybody is squinting into the early morning sun. We weren’t prize-worthy, but we were honest. Most of the pictures are of Christopher and Ari — and Michael and Sarah — their best friends who live across the street. These four are still so close, it makes my heart get all mooshy.

I see tips and hints about how to take the perfect picture, complete with kids holding little signs (actually, posting the year would help when sorting two decades later), and how to go about posting them online. We didn’t have Facebook and Instagram, we didn’t have the internet. We took the pictures, had them developed, then threw them in a cupboard or box for the day I would make orderly photo albums. My baby turned 24 last week and I have stacks and stacks of photographs stuffed into envelopes and bins.

I’m not a fan of posting pictures of children online. Not because I think someone is going to try to steal your kid, but because I think people — even tiny ones — get to decide for themselves if that is something they want. I do not like people posting pictures of me without my knowledge or consent, and I wouldn’t do it to my kids, regardless of age. The idea of consent starts even here. Consent is important. Children are never too young to learn the concept.

Ari, 24, has finished up several work terms and is headed back to college for his final two semesters. He’d lived in residence his first year, and he moved out of the house last year. He boomeranged home a few months back and, I’ll admit, the fact he’s returning to school has lost some of the intensity it once had.

After a year and a half in the real work world, school is a slight dénouement. There is no flurry of back-to-school clothes or supplies. The day after Labour Day, when I got up to tend to the cats, I noticed he hadn’t even come home the night before. No first day jitters here, just another day. I headed out a little later that morning, assuming he would drive straight to school from his friend’s place.

I want to tell you I was a little melancholy, this final first day after so many years of first days. But if you think your middle- or high school kids get sulky with those annual pictures, you wouldn’t believe the grief when they get to university or college. Somehow, the most photographed generation on the planet draws the line at the most replicated photo.

At 10:30 that morning. my phone blipped. A text from Sarah. It just said “tradition.” When I opened it, it was a picture of Ari. Mugging for his own camera, he’d written across it, “official first last day of school. No one here to take it for me, but I’m the last one on the steps.”

Sarah graduated in the spring, Michael and Christopher are long done. No cat was captured in the frame, and Ari knows not to take a photo looking into the sun.

The last one on the steps hopped into his car and drove to school.

And his mom stared at that photo and felt a rush of years.

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After Ari’s year and a half in the real work world, school is a slight dénouement. There is no flurry of back-to-school clothes or supplies.