Words for Wednesday’s Children

This is a season of passages, of journeys ended and journeys begun, a time to look back and a time to move on.

Never was this clearer than last Wednesday at Castaic Elementary School, where a friend of mine named Travis Bach said goodby to the airy pleasures of fifth grade and turned to face the more serious demands of junior high.

He is among 150,000 such students in L.A. County to be moving from the protective embrace of a village atmosphere into a less comforting arena. I wanted all of them to know we understand what they’re going through.

Growing up is hard to do.

Travis seemed to sense that as he walked through his schoolyard for the last time. Goodby to the musty, pale yellow portables, the asphalt with its spidery cracks, the basketball courts, the swings, the rolling brown hills.

Goodby to little-kid things in a world that demands a quickening maturity, goodby to innocence in a world that shoves adulthood into children’s faces, goodby to easy safety in a world where peril waits in the shadows.

He said his goodbys without words, but they were in his eyes and in his expressions. Farewell to all the yesterdays and hello to all the tomorrows in places beyond imagination, in forests of uncompromising newness.

Passages, passages . . .

*

Middle school is a difficult time. The instinct to belong, to be accepted, clouds rationality in unformed minds. Swagger was invented in junior high. Gangs form there. Drug dealers haunt the age group.

A door opens at this age to a world which, as poet Robert Nathan wrote, “is changed like the sea in another light, a storm light. A world of raging waves and sudden terror. . . .”

I thought about that on Wednesday as 91 fifth-grade students of Castaic Elementary rose to accept their certificates of promotion from Principal Beverly Knutson, each of them saying goodby in his or her own way.

Among them were Christian Velazquez and Sharonjeet Ghuman and Chris Tsangarakis and Ryan Neal and Jose Uribe and Ala Hadji and Melissa Holbrook and Jeremy Schwartz . . . and my friend Travis.

He stood straight and tall before the microphone and thanked his teachers and his parents for seeing him through the first five grades of his life, then crossed the stage to his chair with the stride of a dragon-slayer.

I remember him from smaller steps in days past, when he was 2 and I took his hand in mine and we walked slowly through a misty rain up a trail of the Santa Monica Mountains.

I see him on a hilltop looking toward a far horizon, feeling the wind, then throwing his head back, mouth open, to taste the distance. And I see him years later on his first day of school, glancing back to toys scattered on the lawn, and taking 5-year-old steps toward this today, this here, this now.

Passages, passages . . .

*

There was a sense of family in the steamy auditorium of Castaic Elementary. It was just before the heavy rainfall, and the day dripped with humidity. Even a breeze that whispered through the open doors of the building bore the hot, moist traces of a coming spring storm.

“Each of you has brought something special to our school,” Knutson told her fifth-graders. “You come from almost every continent on the planet. You speak nine different languages. You have brought us many pleasures. . . .”

They were words meant for Daniel Esiquio, Jeremy Linebager, Aanont Santisaranyu, Lauren Mazzeo, Allan Jones, Eda Tangco . . . and Travis Bach.

“Today is the day we can go on with our journey,” Knutson said. “We have learned to rely on each other. You will be missed.”

There is a kind of melancholy to growing up, and a kind of bravery too. In rituals as old as rainfall, the young move beyond our protective vision to chart their own way through dark and unmapped woods.

This isn’t easy. Not all birds fly swiftly. Not all small animals escape their predators. To continue into the unknown takes courage in the hearts of those to whom courage is new. To choose the right path takes judgment where none existed before. They must be acquired quickly in junior high school.

I tried to tell Travis that as we left the schoolyard, even as I once told his mother, Linda, a long time ago. Be brave. Be swift. Choose carefully. And take my love with you wherever you go.

Passages, passages . . .