The bus.

What is it with parents, young kids, first days, and the emotional symbolism of busses? My daughter heads into 1st grade in a few weeks, and we're a year into her school drop-off experience. However, she doesn't take a bus to school (we drive her), so while I've had the gaze-forlornly-while-she-walks-in-the-front-door experience, I have yet to have the up-the-stairs-into-the-yellow-bus experience...until about 10 minutes ago. My daughter's going to summer camp for a few weeks, up in the hills about 8 miles from where we live. For the next 3 weeks, we'll be walking to a nearby corner, where a bus driven by what looks like a 12-year-old pulls up and K bounds onto it. Today was her first day, and I imagined her surrounded by unfamiliar faces, trying to figure out where to sit while mean kids blocked their seats. Of course, reality is that she just got on and took a seat. She didn't seem to think much about where or whom to sit next to. Basically, all of the fear and apprehension is on my end, based on a combination of a traumatic bus experience or two of my own and probably at least as many bad teen movies. There's something so both inspiring and sad about seeing your kid drive away in a bus. It's literally separation - no need to overanalyze here - as she becomes a real kid. She held both of our hands as we walked to the bus stop, and I'm starting to count the times she'll hold my hand, as I know I've only got 1 or 2 more years of that left, tops. In the 10 minutes from leaving our house to getting on the bus, I experienced the end of young childhood and the beginning of the next phase. Hmm...what do we call it? Middle-child-hood? 6-10s? Dunno. OK, enough drama. I'm going to work.