a tearful and thankful nod to kindergarten

Mrs. Brown and a group hug with her littles - 8 boys, 3 girls - before their end of the year program last week.

I’m an emotional wreck this morning. It’s the second to last day of Kindergarten for our oldest. Tomorrow, what’s become a second family to her will cease to exist. And I am grieving.

I am mourning the safety and kindness and comfort she’s been able to return to day after day for the last year. I’m grieving the innocence and freedom she’s experienced and exhibited. I’m grieving that she will never experience an environment so uninhibited and accepting and playful and authentic ever again.

Kindergarten is a unique grade, because it falls at an incredibly unique developmental stage. Innocence and impulsivity, honesty and heart, purity of personality and perspective, enthusiasm and energy, curiosity and increasing capability … they’re coming into themselves but are yet unfettered by life’s constraints (those imagined, ridiculous, and/or real). 

And, it’s just SO hard to say goodbye to this stage. 

Yes, there is new and beautiful and necessary and boundless to come … but I am so very aware (my education and profession have taught me this) it will NEVER be this way again. 

So, this week I grieve. 

She is mourning, as well. We’ve had lots of conversations about having more than one feeling at the same time and where we’re feeling it in our body and what we can/want to do with it all … 

And I’m holding her tight, marveling at this precious almost six-year-old we get to walk life alongside. She is effervescence and beauty and creativity and LIFE, and I just adore her …

Finally, I am grateful for the place she’s gotten to do school at these last three years. Grateful for the privilege to choose into it and to be present — to drop her off and pick her up and join in at times — throughout it. Grateful for the teachers she’s been taught and influenced and loved by. Grateful for the kids she’s played and fought and learned with — grateful for the families from which they came.

Because this is what’s true: While names and faces may fade from explicit memory over time, their bodies and minds WILL retain and navigate from THIS FOUNDATION of kindness, safety, love, play, and freedom they experienced with THIS kindergarten class. That is SUCH a big deal.

I am just so grateful. And sad. For now …

LOVE.

40 weeks

It’s my due date, and I already have an almost two week old baby girl.

I’m celebrating by changing a dozen diapers, offering up my boobs every couple of hours, trying half a dozen techniques to calm crying (with little, to no, success), and sitting and standing with an excessive amount of caution due to tears in the lady parts.

This ish is hard. Harder than I could have expected. Harder than I wanted. Harder than I would have signed up for. We’ve walked into a very harsh reality. One that is self-doubt inducing, emotionally overwhelming, relationally challenging, and worldview confounding.

In these first days as a family of three, I’ve marveled at her every feature, took thousands of pictures, cuddled her close and posted my pride on social media. But, in and out of those days, I’ve also had what one mom friend called “buyer’s remorse.” I’ve wondered out loud, “what have we done?,” and “what if I’m not wired for this ... what if I forced His hand and she’s going to pay the price for what I lack?” I’ve felt my blood pressure rise, my survival instinct flair up, at a hint of a whimper. I’ve worked hard at breathing deeply when she’s at my breast, hoping against hope that somehow I can spare her reading (and transferring) anxiety from her caregiver. I’ve struggled, tears streaming down my face, just wanting to hear my husband say all these feelings are normal and that I am a good mother, that, somehow, he’s seen me show up and impress him with my maternal instincts. And I’ve cried more, alone on the corner of the couch, when he’s remained silent. 

This is hard. She’s beautiful and precious. And I can’t help feeling like she deserves better than I’m giving her. And that’s all I’ve got right now.

Love.