I guess I thought I would be more emotional about my youngest graduating from high school

For many years I've tried to imagine this point in time.

Even when our son Jack was just a little guy, I often looked ahead to his high school graduation. What would it feel like, knowing an era in our family was coming to an end? How would I react to the conclusion of a very long journey involving the Tennant family and Wickliffe schools?

After all, Tennants have been students in this district for 50 of the last 61 years. It began when my family moved here from Euclid in the spring of 1963 and continued with only the slightest of interruptions when my brother Mark graduated in June 1975 and I started kindergarten that September.

There was an 11-year hiatus from the time I graduated in 1988 until Elissa started at Wickliffe Elementary in 1999. But since then, there has always been some combination of our kids in the schools.

Now, come May 15th when Jack dons the cap and gown, it all comes to an end. As a family, we're exiting stage left.

What I expected, when I thought about it those many years ago, was that I would be filling up Facebook right about now with a series of sentimental and highly emotional posts. I figured I would be lamenting daily about time going by so fast and little Jack getting his diploma the same way his four siblings did before him.

But I haven't done that. I haven't felt especially moved to do it.

And I wonder why.

It's not that I don't care. That's not the case at all. It's just that I'm...tired, I guess. 

Many families have reached this point before us, and I think most would agree it's a long road. Even when it's an especially enjoyable road, as it thankfully has been with our children, it's still a long one. It takes its toll mentally, emotionally and even physically (I'm fine never again having to move another chair or heavy table around the middle and high schools as an event set-up volunteer, thank you very much.)

Terry is the one who keeps Jack organized and focused on a daily basis – as one must often do with 17-year-old boys – but I still find myself running on fumes as we approach the finish line.

Speaking of finish lines, it doesn't help that Jack's senior track season has been all but derailed by a recurring calf injury. This was supposed to be the year he peaked and ran his personal-best times over 800 and 1600 meters. But as I type this, he hasn't even participated in half the meets.

If you've ever had a calf injury, you know how long they take to heal and how easy it is to make them worse when you push yourself too hard trying to come back.

I suppose there's also the fact that, while Jack and Terry are at home doing school-related stuff, I'm at work earning the money we all need to live on. There are events and activities I miss.

That has always been the case, though. Nothing new there.

In the end, it may simply be one of two things:

(1) Maybe the rush of emotion and sentimentality is yet to come. Maybe, once that jam-packed mid-May weekend of prom, senior awards and commencement arrives, I'll start feeling all the feels I anticipated in the first place.

(2) Then again, maybe I'm mistaking quiet contentment for apathy. Maybe this is the way years of worrying about the kids, helping them through the tough times, and taking pride in their achievements was always going to culminate.

Maybe this all ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

A low-key, joyous whimper. Accompanied by a half-smile and a look ahead to all the exciting things yet to come in our lives.

We're not even in our mid-50s yet, Terry and I. Lord willing and the creek don't rise, we still have a lot to do and a lot to look forward to.

It just won't necessarily involve the Wickliffe City School District anymore.

I think it's what the word "bittersweet" is supposed to describe.

Four things I remember vividly about elementary school

(1) The Smell
It wasn't a bad smell. It was just a smell that you can only experience inside a school. And for whatever reason, it generally can only be found inside an elementary school. Whenever I happen to be inside a school and I get a whiff of that whatever-it-is smell, I am instantly transported back in time to Mapledale Elementary School in the late 70s.

(2) The Chairs
As near as I can tell, all three elementary schools in Wickliffe at that time were stocked with the same hard chairs for students. They were different colors, but it was the same basic, functional 70s design. The grown-ups, meanwhile, got different chairs that were all this pinkish color. And their chairs were bigger because, you know, the adults were bigger.

(3) The Layout
Mapledale no longer exists. The building became a senior center the year after I "graduated" from sixth grade, and a few years ago it was torn down entirely to make way for new houses (or maybe they're condos?) But I can remember every nook and cranny of that school, because I experienced them all at one point or another. Are you like that with your old schools? I spent seven years there from kindergarten through sixth grade, so I guess it stands to reason that I got to know the place pretty well.

(4) The Teachers
In elementary school, you are of course assigned to one teacher. In the early grades, you are with that teacher virtually the entire day, with the exception of special classes like art, gym, music, etc. That teacher becomes a major influence in your life, which is why I will always hold a special place in my heart for Mrs. Janes, Mrs. Lucci, Mrs. Schwarzenberg, Mr. Blough and Mrs. Grabner. Two of them (Schwarzenberg and Grabner) I had twice. They taught me more than they could possibly know, and they whipped me into shape when they needed to. What a great and awesome responsibility you teachers have.

I'm American, so I only speak American

In a couple of weeks I'll be jetting off to Frankfurt for a business trip. I'll spend four days or so in Germany, and then another two in London before returning home.

This will be my second time in Germany and my third time in the UK, and I think both countries are great.

That's partly because there's virtually no language barrier in either. They invented English in the UK (though I naively like to think we in the U.S. perfected it), and virtually everyone I ran into during my first trip to Germany spoke English. Excellent English, in fact. It was weird.

I mentioned to several Germans how stunned I was at their ability not only to speak my language, but to speak it so fluently. One woman with whom I regularly work at our German public relations firm at times has no accent whatsoever when she speaks English. It's like she's from Iowa.

Generally their response is something along the lines of, "Well, we learn English in school at a young age, and of course we're bombarded by American culture and American TV shows and movies all the time."

Which always makes me feel bad. Not only that relatively few of us in the U.S. bother to learn a second language well, but that our influence is everywhere and we sort of take for granted that that's the way it should be.

A lot of Americans take foreign languages in high school, but that seems way, way too late to start. The time to start learning a language is when you're really young and you're an absolute sponge for vocabulary and pronunciation.

When I was growing up in the Wickliffe school district, everyone took French class from the time they were in first grade. In fact, I took French every year from first grade through my third year in college.

You would think that would make me fluent, but I'm not. I can read it fairly well, and I can get by in a conversation if the person to whom I'm speaking talks slowly. But I never spent any significant amount of time in a Francophone country, and therefore I was never forced to really learn the language the way you are when you're immersed in a culture and have no choice but to learn the words or be utterly lost.

Nowadays Wickliffe has gone to a more traditional model whereby the kids don't get any exposure to foreign languages until sixth grade, and even then the only choices are French and Spanish.

It probably makes more sense in today's world to learn Mandarin, or maybe even Russian or Arabic. But regardless of what language you take, there is value in the learning itself. Taking a foreign language forces you to think in new and unfamiliar ways, presumably forging new pathways in your brain and making you smarter and all of that stuff.

But I'm American, and  I will likely die knowing only how to say "Please open the window" in French and how to count to 10 in Japanese.

Which puts me ahead of about 99% of my countrymen. Sigh.

Things I'll miss about having a child in elementary school

Every year since 1999, we have had at least one kid attending Wickliffe Elementary School, a stately(?) old brick building that stands majestically on Lincoln Road and contains vomit residue from generations of students.

That's what I think of when I think of elementary schools: puke. I don't know why. It's not like there was a kid barfing every day when I was a student at the now-defunct Mapledale Elementary School in the 70s and early 80s. But it did happen occasionally.

The only time I upchucked in school wasn't actually in the school building. It was at our end-of-the-year second-grade class picnic at Twin Lakes Park (now Orlando Park...things change...so it goes). We had just eaten lunch, and a bunch of us had taken our gloves over to the dirt field for a quick game of softball.

It was hot, and as I said we had just eaten. And I'm sure I was wearing jeans because there's no way they would have let us wear shorts. And suddenly, well, as I stood in the dusty infield, my lunch (which I'm sure somehow involved a couple of slices of Fazio's Italian bread) decided to make a reappearance all over second base.

After I had expelled the contents of my stomach and felt much better, Vince Boyce very casually yelled, "Time out! Scott barfed." Just like that. I don't remember what happened then exactly, but I think we just covered it up with dirt and resumed our game. Little boys are like that.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Yeah, the things I'll miss about having a kid in elementary school. Our youngest, Jack, is in fourth grade, which means next year he'll move next door to Wickliffe Middle School, and the long line of Tennants at Wickliffe Elementary will come to an end.

By the way, speaking of Tennants in Wickliffe schools, our family has been in the system for a long time. It started in the spring of 1963 when my siblings moved from Euclid to Wickliffe and enrolled as students at Mapledale. There was then at least one Tennant in the school system without interruption until I graduated from high school 25 years later in 1988.

Then, after an 11-year absence, we were back again in 1999 when my oldest, Elissa, started kindergarten. So assuming Jack doesn't drop out of school to become a crime lord or something and graduates on schedule in June 2023, that means there will have been Tennants in the Wickliffe schools for 50 of 61 academic years spanning from 1962-63 to 2022-23. Did I do that right? I'll trust that my Wickliffe education was sufficient to ensure that the math is correct.

Anyway, the things I'll miss about having a kid in elementary school. There are three:

(1) THE INNOCENCE: Yeah, I know that kids are getting more and more street-wise at younger and younger ages.  But elementary school kids are still essentially innocent and fun. I've coached them enough in baseball and soccer, and had enough of them in my house over the years, to know this is still true. Then middle school comes and suddenly there are hormones and drama and the emergence of The Bad Kids and...I don't know, it's just not the same. I'll miss the innocence of elementary school.

(2) THE CHEESY SCHOOL PROGRAMS: Nothing beats a first-grade play for sheer unintentional comedy value. Nothing.

(3) THE TEACHERS: I can only speak from my experience as a parent at Wickliffe Elementary, but I am blown away at the extent to which the faculty there genuinely cares about my children. Not only professionally, but emotionally and socially, as well. They're great people, and they've obviously played a huge role in shaping my kids, and for that I'm eternally grateful. I'll miss every one of them.