The First Day

I sent my little boy, my first, my sidekick, my buddy, my companion of five years off to kindergarten today. I had to have his Dad drop him off because I knew that if I took him to school it would end in me being an absolute, unalterable, grotesque mess of tears and mucous. I settled for taking a picture of Captain Kindergarten with his transformers lunch box and giving him a thumbs up as he climbed in the back of our truck. And for that I did an awesome job of keeping my face clean (go me!).

I did pretty good all day, minus the panicked prayers every now and again pleading that he wasn't in an abysmal pit of unhappiness. But at 1:40 p.m. I started getting truly antsy. I caught myself counting down the minutes until the school bell would ring. And then I noticed that I was obsessing on figuring out how many minutes it might take to load the kids on the buses taking into account the extra drag that first day confusion would add. By 2:38 I was jumping at every helicopter overhead since I was POSITIVE it was the bus pulling up to our driveway. When the bus finally showed its large yellow self I ripped my baby off my breast, hung up the phone on my sister mid-conversation and ran for the porch. And there he was my big boy with his back pack bobbing, running around the front of the bus smiling and yelling, "Mom, Mom!" I felt real joy.

Then CPT K came inside and his sister and I pestered him with questions until he broke and let us know in no uncertain terms that he was done with our interrogation. So for the rest of the afternoon and evening I panted in hope of him dripping or dropping details of his day. As parched as I was for a picture of every second of his existence away from me, I was able to maintain enough disinterestedness that he spilled out here and there how they watched an angry birds video and the yellow bird was named chirp, that they had computer time and you have to click the mouse hard and two times fast (I got a good demonstration of that), that they went to music class and watched the teacher sing, and that he sat in the second row at lunch. After the post-school clam-up I was grateful to get that much out of him.

I suppose I will get used to him having another life that isn't part of mine. I guess I can even accept that it is a good and healthy thing. Maybe my own life will take a more gratifying shape as I let him go about molding his. But still I don't think my mother's heart will ever really get used to him not always being within reach of my hugging arms.