Kindergarten

Ready for school!

My baby started kindergarten.

With her new teacher on the first day of school

What is it about this event that is so significant to a mother? Why does the first day of school suddenly mean that my baby has grown up? Is no longer my baby any more? Is seconds away from falling in love, getting married and having babies of her own?  How has she suddenly gone from my little bundle of love in the hospital to a school girl with friends and a personality and hot lunch?

Giving Cohen a hug before leaving for Kindergarten

Is this why I was choking back tears as we stood in line waiting for the first bell to ring on her first day of kindergarten?  Why I had to channel my happy thoughts as I watched her find her desk and sit down without an upward glance to see if Mommy was still watching through the doorway?  Why I had to give myself a pep talk as I walked back to my car thinking about how just yesterday she was a toddler and how just the day before that I was in kindergarten myself?

At her desk

I was strong.  All day.  I kept fighting against the tears that really wanted to flow.  Until bedtime, that is.

I read to Marley every night.  That night we were just finishing Charlotte's Web.  I have never read the book (I had seen the movie years before) so I wasn't prepared when I reached the part where Wilbur looked up at Charlotte and gave her a wink.

"She knew he was saying good-bye in the only way he could. And she knew her children were safe. 'Good-bye!' she whispered. Then she summoned all her strength and waved one of her front legs at him. She never moved again. Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the races horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. . . Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all.  No one was with her when she died."

All the tears I had been holding back, all the emotions I had been fighting with pep talks and happy thoughts came flooding to the surface as I read sobbed through that passage.

I looked over at my little five-year-old who didn't seem to be phased by Charlotte's demise; but who seemed to be completely perplexed by my sudden show of emotions.  She gave me a "squishy hug" which I returned knowing that in the blink of an eye she was would be a mother herself, sending her first child off to kindergarten and perhaps reading Charlotte's Web to her.  Maybe then she'd understand, as only a mother can, why the first day of kindergarten is perhaps as heartbreaking as Charlotte's Web.

2nd day of school

waiting for the bell with her new friend, Mele

3rd day of school (and yes, I was the mom with my camera at school every day)

4th day of school and 1st homework assignment

1st ride on the bus

6th day of school