First moments last a lifetime

I remember the first time I picked up my youngest son at his first school dance. He was in Grade 4 and he had skipped dances earlier in the year because they conflicted with Yarmouth Junior A Mariners hockey games.

With the Mariners season over it meant he didn’t have to choose between a game or a dance. When I picked him up after the dance I asked him how things at went.

“Fine,” he said, “but this one girl kept asking me to dance and kept asking me out.”

He said he had politely turned her down when she kept asking him out. I told him it was just as well. “You’re way too young to be worrying about girls,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Besides, she wasn’t my type.” His type?

He was nine years old and he had a type?

I often think back to all of the firsts I had with my two boys. I’m not talking about their first steps, their first words, or their first teeth. I’m talking about other first stuff.

Such as the first time my youngest son decided to cut his own bangs. Luckily his first time was also his last time. I was reminded of this recently when I came across a photo of his bangs hacked off, ranging in length from six or seven centimetres to a few millimetres. I was at work during the haircut, my husband was in our garage and Justin, who was probably about four at the time, apparently had toothpaste in his bangs. (Don’t ask.) And in a four-year-old’s mind the only way to get toothpaste out of your hair is with a haircut. Did I mention the following night was also his soccer team pictures?

Speaking of pictures I remember my oldest son’s first school picture. A cute little smile (and, thankfully, perfectly even bangs.) But as he aged school pictures became more complicated. We used to practice his smile at home on school picture morning but inevitably when the proof came back he’d have this odd expression on his face – somewhere in between a smile and looking like he needed to go to the bathroom. Sometimes there was no smile at all. Stone cold serious, he was. He’d say he tried to smile. Hopefully he’d try harder the next year.

I remember the first time my oldest son saw me wearing a shirt that had a zipper down the front as opposed to buttons. He was four years old and really confused. I could see his mind churning: What happened to the buttons?

As he reached out for my shirt I told him, “Don’t unzip my shirt, I don’t have anything on underneath it.”

“Don’t you have that thing?” he asked.

“What thing?” I said.

“You know, that thing,” he said. “What do you call that anyway? A booby protector?”

In the coming days a lot of my friends will be concentrating on ‘firsts’ and ‘lasts.’ Their sons and daughters will be going to university for the first time. Leaving home for the first time.

Other friends have children entering Grade 12 where it will be a year of last times – the last school dance, the last sports game, the last day of school, etc.

Neither will be easy. I can remember Jacob’s Grade 12 year feeling a lot of emotions as the

last moments kept piling up. Then the husband of a friend reminded me, “You know, there’s still a lot of firsts to come.”

After all, it’s a lifelong journey. Most of the firsts in my life bring a smile to my face when I think of them.

But then there firsts.

You know the ones – the first crushing disappointment, the first break-up, the first time you saw your child hurting and you knew that a kiss or a Band-Aid wouldn’t make it go away. The first time your are the other ‘baby’ sailed away on a fishing boat on dumping day morning.

I recall one first, when a hockey tryout didn’t work out the way a 10-year-old had hoped. In was something we later shrugged off but in the moment it was one of those crushing disappointments in life. It was hard for a young kid to process the fact that his friends were moving onto to something new, something else, without him.

He sat in the backseat on the drive home heartbroken and crying.

I sat in the front seat heartbroken and crying – not because he didn’t make the team, but because I loved him.

It was one of the first times I realized that when their heart is broken, yours is too.

And whether it was the first time, or the 21st time, it was never an easy thing to deal with.

Cut bangs will grow back. A broken heart will eventually mend.

Still, give me a bad haircut any day.