While everyone was boohooing about their babies going off to preschool, kindergarten, junior high, whatever, I have to admit (with just a touch of underlying mother-guilt) that I did not feel much tugging at my heartstrings this morning. I mean, yeah, of course, Jake has grown. Andrew has grown. Time goes quickly, too quickly most days. But I feel that way every day, not just on marked occasions, so I guess I kind of missed the "back to school crying bandwagon."
In case you didn't notice, I'm a camera fanatic too, so snapping pictures isn't something that I don't reserve just for holidays and birthdays either! This morning, I took Jacob's picture outside our house in the same spot I have taken his picture every year for the last 5 years. This year, Andrew joined him, and also had a photo taken of just himself. Andrew officially started Pre-K today, but it wasn't a significant change for him - same building, same teachers. It's next year that he will have a true adjustment.
First day of fourth grade.
A photo with his bubbly baby brother!
And a little recognition of Andrew's first day of Pre-K too! (Barnie the sea otter, Spider Man and Venom also attended school today as well!)
When I pulled up to the front door of HBC, all the moms were outside with their kids, snapping photos in front of the school, having the kids pose with Father Gardner. I stopped the car, looked back at Jake, and asked if he wanted me to get out and take photos of him. He looked at me for a millisecond, shook his head and said, "Na…not really.'"
"You sure?" I asked.
"Yeah. I'm sure."
"No photo with Father Gardner on the first day? Or in front of the school sign?"
"Na. No thanks."
He hopped out of the car. I blew him a kiss, watched him walk into the school and drove away. No tears from him. No tears from me. Easy enough, right?
Then, by chance, this Natalie Merchant song came up on my play list on the way to work after I dropped Andrew off:
It's one of my favorites, but I forget about it until I happen upon it. I love the whole song, but I'm always struck by the line, "Every time we say good bye, you're frozen in my mind as the child that you never will be again."
I remember once when Jake was in first grade, I snapped a photo of him walking from the car into the school. It was one of those parenting moments when I felt overcome with the realization of how fast my first born son was growing, a third of the way to adulthood, slipping away from me before my very eyes. In my mind's eye I can still see his orange jacket, his backpack in his hand at his side, his confident steps away from me and into a world that was composed of more than just our family. (I was so moved by those feelings that I wrote about it back then, and after endless searching on this dag-gone blog, I found it here).
Thinking of that picture, the one that is permanently etched in my mind, listening to Natalie Merchant, realizing that in only one year (a year that will fly by faster than a blink), Andrew will be walking that walk to kindergarten and there will no longer be little ones in this house, I finally felt the pang that everyone else had been talking about all day. I guess the sentimentality bug has a way of biting even the least suspecting of us. Or perhaps even those of us who only show our sappy side behind closed doors most of the time just have to admit it out loud every once in a while: my kids are growing, and while I get terribly frustrated with them multiple times every day, while I yell too much and too loudly, I am also amazed by their tiny little growing souls - amazed by the things they have learned, the things they can do, the sheer wonder of their existence and the fact that they came from inside of me. I am not the best mother on the planet. I make many mistakes. I am not sure how I lucked into these two beautiful boys, but I am indeed blessed by them, each and every day, and it does, in fact, make me a little sad to think of them growing up.
Now, I just need to remember these emotions when I step on a Lego barefoot in the middle of the night...
