Oh, September. How I love you. With your cooler weather and your football and your START OF THE SCHOOL YEAR. You signal the end of an insane 3 month period in which I rarely sit down and I eat my kids’ leftover macaroni for lunch and I constantly say things like, “My couch is not your jungle gym!” and “How many times have I said that my couch is not your jungle gym!!” September is a time of renewal. When else would you find me giddy to wake up an hour early to pack lunches and braid hair?
It’s unfortunate that September is only 30 days long because by October 1st I will have gone back to my old ways, neglecting paperwork and hitting the snooze button for as long as possible. But for those blissful 30 days, I am at my best.
But this year, I find myself vacillating between unbridled excitement and bittersweet sadness. This year I am sending another child off to Kindergarten. My middle child, my sweet, huggable, gullible, teddy-bear-with-its-heart-on-its sleeve middle child, is leaving the nest. And I’m not really ready for it. Part of me wants to do cartwheels all the way to the bus stop and part of me wants to keep her tucked safely at home with me. In my mind she’s still that little girl who would ask me to paint her “thingers” and “tonynails”. In my mind she’s still that sweet little girl who would grab my face, look me earnestly in the eyes and say, “Mom, you’re the first mom I ever saw.”
But something happened this summer and all of a sudden she’s memorizing Taylor Swift lyrics and obsessing about clothes and watching Harry Potter movies. How did this happen?
And so, on this rainy first day of school, I watched with pride and excitement and reluctance as my newly minted Kindergartner shed her snoopy pajamas, put on her carefully selected first day of school outfit, donned her rain coat and spanking new backpack, and stepped out onto the porch… where she promptly fell down the front steps. She immediately began to cry, and for a split second I was convinced we had made the wrong decision. She obviously needed to be shielded from the big bad world! (And seriously, why does this kid constantly fall down? It’s a common theme in our house.) But I knew what had to be done. We gathered around her, pulled her up, wiped her tears, and tickled her until she laughed. Then we walked to the bus stop to put our two big elementary school kids on the bus.
As is so often the case with parenting, I feel torn in two directions. I want to help her grow up, but I also want to keep her little forever. And so, while I’m as psyched as the next mom that we can close the door on another successful (but exhausting) summer, I’m also reluctant to let it go.
