Back to School

August 19, 2016

Dear Lowery,

You are starting kindergarten this Monday. And I'm feeling only one emotion about it: excitement.

For the past few weeks, many people have asked how I'm handling the fact that you are starting school. They have looked at me with sympathy, a hand across their chest, head tilted to the side. Your grandmother asked me yesterday if I was holding up ok, and she was teary just forming the question. My friends are struggling with sending their own children off to school. And I remember how your Aunt Minnie struggled when your cousin Payton started kindergarten.

But regardless of all the sadness I'm expected—and allowed—to feel, I don't feel any of it. Not a single drop. I feel nothing but excitement. Well, that's not true. I feel mostly excited. The other feelings I have, to a much lesser degree, are: overwhelmed, anxious, fatigued, and gassy. In no particular order.

This doesn't mean I don't understand the strong emotions people are feeling. I completely do. No matter what the milestone you come across as my kid, I'm always a bit baffled it's time for it already. And when you go off to college, I'll sing a different tune, but for now I don't feel sadness.

The past few days I've watched pictures of children on their first day back to school populate my newsfeeds (which is exactly what Facebook should be for; I doubt it will still be around when you are a parent because the political articles and time lapse recipes will have imploded it). I've read all the emotional turmoil other parents are in watching their children getting ready for something they still can’t believe it’s time for. And I've tried to mirror that sadness, that longing for your infancy, that mad grasp at your youth. I've worked like hell to tap into some deep, repressed sadness that I could get to bubble to the surface so I could have a good cry about the fact that you are starting school. Because just yesterday you were emerging—albeit begrudgingly—from my womb.

But I've had to come to terms with the fact that there is no deep, repressed sadness. I'm not in denial. I'm not ignoring true feelings.

And this week I finally figured out why.

You and I went to the mall. We were there to get your ears pierced. For more than a year you've said you were ready to get your ears pierced, but you kept talking yourself out of it. But this week, you said you were ready and I don't know why, I don't know what it was about how you said it, but I knew this time you meant it. So there we were, the minute the mall opened. You strode with confidence—but you still wanted to hold my hand—into Claire's, the very place I had my own ears pierced 20 years ago.

You were curious and animated—your most defining traits—but something was different. Something I couldn't quite articulate until the technician explained that she was the only one working and so she would have to pierce your ears one at a time. She asked if you were brave enough to do that—to not chicken out before the second ear. I shrugged at her, and then I looked to you for the answer. And you nodded, once. Then you picked out a beautiful pair of sparkly pink earrings, you sat still as she marked the dots on your ears, and you barely cried while she submerged the post into your lobes, one ear at a time.

And that’s when it hit me, the reasons behind the excitement I've been feeling about you. About school. About you growing up.

I'm finally getting the relationship with you I had always dreamed of before you were ever born. I'm no longer making all your choices. I'm no longer responsible for every decision put before you. You've grown into a person who is all her own. And I have a relationship with you.

When I dreamt of children, when your dad and I planned for them, this, this time right now, is what I had imagined. The conversations we’d have. The choices you’d make. The aspects of you I’d learn. Babies are great, sure. They are cuddly, adorable, the clothes are fun, the sweet looks from strangers are heartwarming. There are some real perks. But nothing that comes close to what I was witnessing in the bright fluorescent lighting of Claire’s.

Which was you, sitting in a chair admiring your newly pierced ears in a hand mirror. Two pink, sparkly marks of your own accord.

And while I'm not ever going to stop being your mom, I am so grateful I am easing off a bit on things you are now proudly taking over. Because with every bit that you take, the more whole you become.

And you're shaping up quite nicely. You're funny. You're compassionate. You're smart as hell. And you're mine.

So no, I'm not the least bit sad about you starting school because it's only going to add more to your wholeness. It's only going to make you more of everything you already are, and more of a few things we’ve yet to learn about you.

What's even more exciting about you getting your ears pierced and you starting school is that I remember my own experiences doing those things. I don't remember being a baby, or taking my first steps, or learning my first words. But I very clearly remember my first day of school. And sitting in that chair at Claire's and gripping the arm rests like you did in preparation for the pain. So now, now you and I have some experiences we can share, memories we can compare, and best of all, you're letting me relive some of my favorites.

All I ask is you let me keep growing right along with you. Keep sharing, keep reliving. And that for a little bit longer you hold my hand while you stride with courage. But even when you're ready to let go, I'll be ready, too. Because we would have grown together.

I know you are ready for school. And I'm ready because you are ready.

But it's important for you to know, as you prepare to start school, that getting to know you, learning about you—watching you become you—well, my darling, it's been the best education of my life.

Now go, learn, grow.

Then come home and tell me all about it.

Love,

Mama