All about Ace

I keep starting and re-starting a post about Ace starting Kindergarten but I can't seem to find the right words. I write about being anxious (and I am) but then I worry that I am not getting across that I am also optimistic and excited about his bright new start. I am mostly (93% to be exact) excited about kindergarten. I know he is going to be a shining star, because he just IS. The other 7% of me is having trouble dealing with the fact that he is 5 years old because yesterday he was 5 days old and I don't really know what has happened and why time likes to screw with me this way. Also, I get anxious when I think about Ace dealing with the big world of School. If I could protect my children from ever having anyone be mean to them ever I would, and I don't care what anyone says about it being part of life and making them tough. (If there was an immunization from broken hearts, I would be the first in line.)
When Ace sees an opportunity to make a friend, he doesn't dip his toes in to test the water, he jumps right it. The other day at the beach, a little boy asked to use his shovel and Ace decided he had found a soulmate (he has about a dozen) and talked all the way home about his new friend and all the fun they had. I love this about Ace and in most cases, everyone else does to. But sometimes, just sometimes, he is rejected. Or worse, sometimes his "new friends" aren't nice to him. That is okay and I know it is part of being 5 (and 32). But I worry because Ace takes it so hard. If someone is not nice to him in return he assumes it's because HE just isn't cool enough and it makes him so sad. And if someone who he has befriended starts treating him unkindly, he has trouble speaking up for himself. At baseball practice once he found a "friend" who chased him around with a giant pixy stick and hit him in the head over and over. When I told this new "friend" to stop, Ace insisted he didn't mind.  I'm terrified that Ace will walk into his kindergarten class with his heart right there on his sleeve where he always wears it and have it crushed by too much rejection.
I do worry, I am anxious about sending him off to school. But when Ace started preschool I lost a lot of sleep worrying that he may be a trouble maker and he was amazing. This past year he was called the mayor of his class and his teacher raved about him every day. He always surprises me. He overcomes obstacles (real or imagined) every day. That is why, tenderhearted as he may be, I know in my heart that he is going to be nothing but a rockstar in Kindergarten.
Rock on, Ace. 

 (Ace, obviously not too concerned about Kindergarten. Julia, giving him props)