William McInnes Article - Sydney Morning Herald

Hope springs eternal

By William McInnes
January 7, 2006

WHEN I finished primary school it didn't really mean that much. There was no big finale, no big moment; it was simply the end of little school. I got a well-meant but absent-minded handshake from a teacher I really liked and then I walked out the gates, and that was that.
These days the end of primary school seems to have taken on a sense of occasion that passes me by.

Now, I don't know, but a friend said to me it was because things were getting a little bit too precious. We want to make things matter more than they should, everything has to be marked, everyone has to have an occasion, an event. And he said it was because the parents wanted it more than the children. Perhaps this is a bad thing because kids will think every moment in their life should be a party or, as my friend likes to say, "a Moment". My friend, by the way, is a teacher who has no children.

Well there you are. And maybe he has a point. But I can't help it if I get a bit involved in that well-meaning, distant way that sentimental parents do. Perhaps it's because I don't have enough to do, but my son is finishing primary school and I'm feeling something in the air.
The school he goes to tells us by way of the weekly newsletter that my son and his classmates are graduating. It sounds vaguely American and makes me feel a little odd about the whole thing. But then, as I tell my friend, the childless teacher, something kicks in. My son is growing up, and he is finishing primary school.

He's growing up. I remember the first day he went to this school. He seemed so little. I was away working on a television show. I stood on a beach with my hair dyed and my fake tan on and I spoke to my little boy as he was about to leave home to go to school for the first day.
The wind blows hard on those southern beaches and I couldn't hear him, so I told him to speak up, he had to shout. So I heard my son's little voice shriek from my mobile phone. "Daddy, what if they laugh at me?"

His made-up father told him not to worry, that of course nobody was going to laugh at him. He yelled that he'd find out and that he loved me.

I remember that as if it was yesterday. Maybe my friend is right; maybe we parents want our children's passage through life to matter in a tangible way to make us feel better.
But I think to myself: so what?

I have lived through that school with him. I have walked the route to school with him, past all those landmarks he knows so well: Ivan's discount hairdressing, the upholsterer's that is always devoid of people but chock-full of chairs in various states of undress. The fruit and veg shop where our dog peed on the old onions outside, which has created a deep suspicion of that vegetable in my son's eyes. The various lollipop people who have morphed into different shapes over those seven years: Strange little Spiro who would blow his whistle at anything, and looked and sounded like one of those funny claymation figures that used to come on for five minutes on the ABC on Sunday nights before the news. Big Peter the Greek, with his booming voice and his laugh. Little Julie, who has been there in all sorts of weather and always with a smile.

How big a change is it for my son to walk that route one more time, the last time before he finishes?

I don't know. I ask him and he shrugs his shoulders the way young boys do.

What will he miss about the school, I ask him. He looks at me. He looks away and smiles.
I ask him again.

"The faces of the people and the voices of the school. The way the birds sing in the arvo before the bell goes and the smell of the canteen. And the oval. I'll miss the oval."

He smiles again and goes about his business. And then says: "I'll miss the national anthem on a Monday."

I let that one go, and I remember many things about that school but two things in particular.
On an excursion to an IMAX cinema to see a film about giant kelp, of all things, I was positioned on the end of a row to aid any little ones who had to dart off to the toilet in the dark.

Nobody came. I looked away from the screen and its 3-D seaweed to see the sight of little people with their funny 3-D glasses all sitting in their seats with their little arms outstretched and their little fingers wiggling in the hope of touching the fish that swam around the weed on the big screen. They were open-mouthed and smiling.

It was them trying to touch something they knew wasn't real, wasn't there, but they would still try. It was beautiful to see that endeavour and somehow it said a lot about our hope and optimism through life.

And my boy's words about the national anthem. At this school the national song is played every Monday and I have seen it sung many times. I have seen how those children sing it hand in hand together. White children, black children, yellow children. Some are Anglos, some are Muslim, and some are indigenous, some of Asian heritage. Yet as they sing that song of ours, that song so often tarted up for no good reason at football games and the like, they sing a song that speaks to anyone with eyes to see and heart to be filled. They sing, these children, and they walk together hand in hand, a rainbow of colours really, a little group of Australians.

It sounds beautiful and I rejoice that such a country can create such a marvel.

It may just be that I'm overly sentimental; it may just be that I want it to be something more important than it is. But I think my son and his classmates and their soon-to-be-old school have given something to me and to the other parents and to our country: hope.