There is some controversy over whether the ceremonies that mark the end of elementary school, day care or eighth grade should be called graduations or promotions. Many firmly believe graduation is a serious honor that should only refer to the completion of more rigorous studies, like high school and college, while others are willing to make an exception for tiny cuties in caps and gowns singing “Barney” songs on stage while Dad records it for posterity.

Either way, you have to admit the bittersweet significance in watching one’s kid — in this case, mine — leave the school he’s attended since he was practically in a booster seat. Now, he’s tall enough to sit in the front seat and mess with my Siri to play sad emo rap in the car. This week, he’s walking across the elementary school stage for the last time with a piece of paper that says he’s moving on.

No matter what you call it, he’s graduating from one stage to another. He’s always going to be my baby. But he’s not a baby anymore. The piece of paper says so.

Siri, play “It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday” by Boyz II Men. I’ll be over here melodramatically dabbing my eye.

When you have a child, people often tell you the years are going to go by so fast that if you blink, you’ll miss it. I always nodded and assumed they knew what they were talking about, but secretly I resented it. I don’t need advice to know that life is fragile, time is fleeting and adorable toddlers seem to quickly become sullen hoodie-wearers who call their mothers “bruh.”

For me, looking too far ahead is akin to how this culture deals with grief — which is to say it wants to push the fast-forward button to the Hallmark card moments, where the hard stuff has whooshed by and everyone is smiling.

Make no mistake: there is grief in these transitions in myriad ways. My kid is now practically as close to finishing high school as he is to when he wore that adorable little cap and gown in preschool. I have to accept that time is gone.

But I don’t want to rush these moments that people tell me are already going to rush by on their own. The hard stuff, the awkward stuff, the things that make us cry are all part and parcel of the whole wonderful package of parenthood.

I still have the brightly colored art class projects that vaguely look like trees, and look at the succession of his class photos showing the gradual loss of baby fat and teeth alongside the varying heights of his Afro.

I want to spend this week and all the weeks between now and when he starts middle school (sob) savoring every part of it. So much has happened in the five years he’s been a student at his current institution, starting with first grade during lockdown in our living room with classmates and teachers he knew only through a screen.

He’s changed, as has the world. One would think the future would look brighter after we were all able to leave the house, but the country is fast devolving into a bleak, authoritarian hellscape where I fear for my child and everyone else’s. It doesn’t escape me that this is happening at the very moment he’s becoming more independent of me and harder to protect.

Sixth grade is not high school or college. The kid is going to have to get through several grades before he’s the age to drive or hold a job (though there are weird billionaires dreaming of the day his tiny fingers can handle the screws in an iPhone). But this is still an ending, and we’re dangling on the precipice of something scary and new.

It’s hard to say goodbye to yesterday. But it’s going to be joyous, in a trepidatious sort of way, to say hello to tomorrow.

I am probably still gonna cry, though.