A half-day today and then we’re through. With elementary school, that is. Two children, eleven years at PS 321: so much to remember, so much to cherish about our time there.

And yet, like any rite of passage, it feels right, too. The end of this and the beginning of something else.

So what is that something else?

Middle school for OSFO; and a new school, new parents to know, new projects for Smartmom. It’s the great blank slate now, the future without elementary school.

There were tears at the fifth grade graduation. Speeches by fifth graders pulled at Smartmom’s heart as did the principal’s words (“as people you understand the importance of working together and making each other look good,” she said); the sight of a girl helping to carry an American flag down the aisle and the spiritual the kids sang facing their relatives from their seats.

Marty Markowitz, as always, delighted the children with his speech about eating right and getting exercise. He asked them: Any doctors in the house, any lawyers, any future borough presidents?

And as he has done for years, he ended the speech with a Star Wars style light saber in his hand, “May the force be with you.”

We sat in the balcony. Teen Spirit napped, Hepcat snapped pictures, Smartmom skipped around to empty seats visting friends. It was a long presentation and it was very hot in the steamy auditorium of John Jay.

But it was the end: of something so powerful and sweet that went by in a flash. Why, it seems just yesterday we walked into that building for the very first time flushed, excited, and apprehensive; ready to begin the adventure.

School is just a place and just one of many places where childhood happens. But it consumes so much time and so much energy for the entire family that one is grateful if that experience is something to savor.

And this was, this school, this part of our lives. And so it ends.