ÃÛèÖÊÓƵ

The old thank-you card is a relic from an earlier millennium, the sort of thing you keep tucked away in a scrapbook in the attic. You trot it out when someone wants evidence that late 20th-century schoolboys actually gave their teachers apples.

It must have been a dandy of an apple. I imagine I spent the whole ride to school puffing hot kid breath on that apple and buffing it against my striped, Bert-and-Ernie T-shirt.

For obvious reasons, there will be no apple polishing at school this year.

As I packed Quinn and LeviÃÛèÖÊÓƵ backpacks for their first day of kindergarten Tuesday morning, I double-checked that we’d tucked in their new teachers’ gift-wrapped surprises. This year, in place of an apple, the boys are giving their teachers new cotton face masks with teacher memes printed on them.

As I drove my twin sons up Highway 26 to Milton East Elementary School, I thought about the peculiar, sudden shift in tradition brought about by the COVID-19 era: Cloth face mask is the new apple.

ItÃÛèÖÊÓƵ such a small thing. Why does it seem to carry such significance?

For Quinn and Levi, here is the significance of face masks: 1.) They understand face coverings guard them, their classmates and their teachers against the spread of a virus thatÃÛèÖÊÓƵ too small to see. 2.) Quinn thinks the masks make him look like a ninja. 3.) Levi really likes the way his mask smells.

ThatÃÛèÖÊÓƵ about as circumspect as two 5-year-old boys are going to get about COVID-19. They’re just ready for school. They’re excited, and I’m glad.

With freshly coiffed school hair and bellies full of breakfast, the boys chattered away in the back seat of my car, their chipmunk voices muffled by the cloth masks they decided to put on right away.

For the last four days, Levi and Quinn have repeatedly watched prerecorded video clips of their teachers welcoming them to school. After about 27 viewings of those videos, one concept repeats itself in my brain.

ItÃÛèÖÊÓƵ something QuinnÃÛèÖÊÓƵ teacher, Mrs. Fladhammer, said. Her face was on camera, partially covered by a mask.

“This mask only covers my mouth and nose,â€� she said. “But itÃÛèÖÊÓƵ not covering up the fun we’ll have in kindergarten.â€�

ThatÃÛèÖÊÓƵ reassurance parents might need more than their kids do. I’m new to this. I’ve never dropped off my boys for their first-ever day of school. Even thatÃÛèÖÊÓƵ different this year.

Any parent who had kids in school last century might remember the days when parents held their son's or daughter's hand as they walked into the classroom on the first day of kindergarten. Even before COVID-19, in our era of heightened school security, that rite of passage has been gradually phased out.

Now, we drop our kids off at the door, and school staff escorts the kids into class.

This year, with schools reopening in the midst of a pandemic, itÃÛèÖÊÓƵ even trickier. Now, instead of a door-side drop—where parents might linger in clusters—staff will meet students at their parents’ cars and escort them straight into school.

Jen Cramer, Milton EastÃÛèÖÊÓƵ principal, told me the idea is to keep parents and students from clustering on the playground and next to the entrances. From a public health perspective, itÃÛèÖÊÓƵ one of many social-distancing measures schools are putting in place to try to keep people safe.

Cramer said some of the adjustments being made to run schools safely feel as cumbersome and foreign to teachers as they do to parents.

“One of the biggest struggles is that typically with elementary school, is you have that ‘hug’ picture where a teacher crouches down by a student and poses for that first day of kindergarten. Years from now, those are the pictures you go back to,� Cramer said. “You think to yourself, ‘I want to be able to do that.’ But you can't do any of that right now.�

Tonight and probably a thousand times later, I’ll ask my boys what they remember most about their first day of kindergarten.

I know what I’ll remember most: A few days before the start of the school year, Milton East staff scheduled a school supplies drive-thru drop-off in the schoolÃÛèÖÊÓƵ parking lot. That allowed Quinn and Levi an in-person, curbside meet-and-greet with their new teachers, Mrs. Fladhammer and Mrs. Neuenschwander.

COVID-19 concerns put a damper on fully orchestrated school open houses, but the curbside meeting might have been more memorable.

I got to watch my two masked ninjas absorbing with excited, bright-blue eyes everything their teachers said. Before their chat wrapped up, the boys broke out Kitty and Snip, two stuffed kitty dolls they’d brought with them. They wanted their teachers to pet their dolls.

Mrs. Fladhammer and Mrs. Neuenschwander tentatively patted the stuffed kitties on their heads. But before they did, they looked at me tentatively. Was it OK for them to get that close? To touch?

I didn’t say this to the two teachers, but I guess I should have:

ItÃÛèÖÊÓƵ OK. We’re all trying to figure this out. ItÃÛèÖÊÓƵ not the same. NothingÃÛèÖÊÓƵ the same. But we’re all working on it. We’ll make it OK, somehow.