As I mentioned on Wednesday, I was asked to guest-write another blog post on the Small Town Kids Blog. My post was published today and you can read it on the STK blog here.
And I'm copying it on my blog, too. Here goes...
T-minus two weeks to school, and my boys and I are talking in the car one morning about the first day of “big boy school” for my youngest. He has been in day care, but will start Pre-K in a few short days. [Our boys go to a school that is Pre-K through 12th grade, so this first day of Pre-K is akin to the first day of Kindergarten for most families.] The first time he will carry a real backpack, a real lunch kit, wear a uniform (with a tie), be dropped off and picked up in a carpool line… you get the gist.
I am excited for him. Ready. I tell him I will walk him in on the first day of school and also pick him up. I then ask his older brother, an 8-going-on-14 year-old, if he will walk his little brother to class. “He can do it himself. He’ll be fine.” To which I reply, “you will walk him into school and make sure he gets to his class or I’ll be walking in with both of you and holding your hand down the hallway.”
“Well let’s just ask him what he wants,” Mr. Smarty Pants says. “Do you want me to walk you to class every day?”
“I want Mama.”
It made me want to cry. No, no it didn’t. I want my boys to be independent. Like me. Like my husband. We try to raise them to be brave, think on their own, and not to always follow the group. We want them to try new things for themselves -- if it means failing sometimes and flying others. This has been a wee bit more challenging with the more reserved second-born, but I digress…
Fast-forward a few days. I receive an invitation to a First Day of School Lunch – where parents will gather and cry about dropping off their precious babies on the first day of school. Lovely gesture, but I think to myself, “I am grown. I am strong. I am a lawyer. I wear my big girl britches. I am not going to cry about my kids going to elementary school. College far away, perhaps. But not Third Grade.”
A week before school, postcards are set to be delivered in the mail letting each child know his or her teacher for the upcoming year. I find myself so anxious, so distracted that I do nothing productive at work, check the mailbox every 15 minutes (knowing full well that mail is not delivered until 4:00 pm on my block), and text all the other parents I know all day long about what classes their children are in.
We attend a back-to-school party three days before school starts, and I laugh and joke with other parents about how the summer has been great but we are all ready for the children to get back to school and back into a routine. I mean, WE.ARE.READY.
The First Day. The boys get up early and I surprise them with Back to School Breakfast, complete with festive place settings, a new book for the oldest, and a new puzzle for the Pre-Kindergartner. I’ve got this: I have done the First Day routine five years now. Nothing over-the-top, but something more special than our usual routine. We take lots of photos in front of our house, holding up cute signs about the first day of school. I drive them to school, walk them both in to their classes, hug the baby big boy, high-five the pre-tween, take more photos, and cheerfully greet all the parents, students, and school employees that I see.
My little one holds onto my leg. He’s shy, not quite ready to be left alone in this big world. I gently push him toward his teacher, tell him I love him and that he will do great. Okay, so perhaps it took a full 20 minutes to actually pry him off my leg and coerce him to sit at his seat at the table. But, we love our school, and I am genuinely excited for him to begin.
I walk to the car and sink into the driver seat. I just dropped off my baby. My last child. The one who still sits in my lap, whom I still carry on my hip and read bed-time stories to.
I also dropped off a Third Grader. He will be nine next month. NINE — halfway through the 18 years I have to raise him at home.
And I cried.
"While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about."
― Angela Schwindt
Beautiful!!
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