And so it begins

Dear Mia,

Tomorrow is a big day for you and for us. Your first day of kindergarten is the beginning of a road of discovery, growth, change and adventure stretching out ahead of you. I have no doubt you will thrive in such an environment. You are bright and curious about every single thing; you soak up and ruminate on each detail. You enthusiastically write random words and ask how everything is spelled and count cows and cars and clouds whenever we go for a drive.

I am excited that you are moving into this next phase of life and yet, and yet…the sentimental side of me, which always looms large, is sad beyond articulation. It is so cliché to feel this way. My baby’s growing up. But how can I be expected to send you off into this world alone? You are only five years old. It seems ridiculous in some ways, though I know you are ready. I have spent the past five years trying to prepare you for this exact moment, and now that we are on its precipice, I realize how poorly I have prepared myself for it. I am bothered that you will be in someone else’s care for the majority of your day, that the circle of my influence will grow smaller. Your life is going to be so much bigger than just this little house and the people inside of it.

I have been so privileged to be able to stay home with you and your sister. I will miss the long, lazy days of hanging out with you and Liv, with no particular agenda or place to be. I have loved the flexibility of our time together, our ability to be spontaneous, to go for walks and play and read and bake whenever we wanted. Now there are schedules and places to be on time and structure where none has existed before. There are rules and processes and order. These are things I’m not really good at, and hope you will be better at them than me.

We went to meet your new teacher last week and she seems kind and sincere and I think you’re going to get along just fine. She will spend more time with you than I will for those three days a week when you’ll be showing and telling and doing math games and finger painting to your heart’s content. You will be out of my reach, out of my view, vulnerable. It will be a change for us both, having spent all of our days together for so long.

I anticipate you will happily and confidently embrace the tenets of formal education and all that it encompasses. I know it is a necessary and logical next step in a series of steps along the winding road of childhood. I am proud of you, who you are and who you will become. And I hope you know I’ll always be waiting right here for you, patiently, to come on home and tell me about your day.

oxox

Love,
Mom

"We need in love to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily, we do not need to learn it." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke