This is a story I worte when I sent my first child off to Kindergarten. 

  Well, I did it. This morning, I dropped my daughter Julia off at school, for her very first day of kindergarten. I’ve anticipated this moment since the day I gave

In the warm months of this past summer Julia heard a lot of kindergarten talk from family and friends, the most common question being the obvious “Are you excited?” At first, she replied with a resounding, “No”, but the last weeks of August revealed a newfound excitement and confidence. One day, out of the blue, when she fielded the question yet again, her answer was a happy and assured “Yes!” I beamed with pride.

My husband and I had initially been hesitant to send her to kindergarten this year, given that she would be among the youngest of her classmates. And her preschool teacher had only exacerbated our indecision, recommending we wait until Julia was one year older. Her first reason was that she’d like to see Julia driving before her classmates, as she always displayed qualities of responsibility and trustworthiness in the classroom. Of course, this was a huge compliment to our daughter, but driver’s license?!? Um, yikes. I was startled. The teacher also spoke of the evils of Julia dating older boys and pointed out if she were a young sophomore and chose to date an older senior, well, I didn’t even hear the end of the argument because that thought alone stopped the entire world’s rotation. If that wasn’t enough to send me running out of that room in hysteria, she went on to paint a heartbreaking picture of us seeing Julia off to college, my husband and I waving goodbye from the curb, her bags packed and dorm room waiting, at the tender age of seventeen. By that time, I was almost unable to react as I watched my Julia’s childhood flash before my eyes.

However, my husband, a long time elementary school teacher, was only annoyed. He had already made up his mind that Julia should enter kindergarten so to him this assessment was part flattery, part alarmist jibber-jabber. But whatever it was, it had worked on me. For weeks he did his best to reassure me that Julia would be just fine and that we should focus more on today than on the potentially heinous what-ifs of her teen-age years. After all she did meet the birthday cutoff date and from his experience as a teacher and what we could tell as her parents, Julia was “ready.” I use that particular word because that’s just the terminology one uses when talking about starting school. At certain stages in your child’s development you’ll find yourself unknowingly using the accepted language of the hour. And in this case, when you’re making the decision whether or not to send your kid to kindergarten the lingo goes like this: Either your son or daughter is “ready” to start, or you are “choosing to give him or her another year”. For me, these phrases of seeming certainty were just a way of convincing myself that I was, in fact doing what was best for my daughter. Claiming to have any idea whether Julia was really ready for school felt like a farce. I knew that there were no guarantees and that all I could do, as a grown-up person was to use my best judgment, to leap or not to leap, holding my breath that with one decision, I wouldn’t ruin my child’s life and scar her forever. Before I had Julia, I resented my mother arming herself with the familiar defense, “ I did the best I could.” But now, as a mother at a crossroads, I realized that doing the best I can is all I can do. Mortifying, but true. So, for lack of anything else to say, I became one with my mantra: “She is ready.”  

As August wound down, we began gearing up for the big day. I allowed myself to daydream of taking Julia shopping for a new backpack and school shoes, and—my favorite part—uniforms. I never got to wear one as a child but always wished I could. I admired the kids in uniforms, because it seemed like they were somehow more special than us kids who wore plain old regular clothes. Uniforms are the great equalizer: Everyone is on the same playing field of style, and somehow, that seems fair. As for Julia, however, still safely oblivious to the discriminating ins and outs of fashion, uniforms solely meant becoming a big kid. I pictured her, all dolled up in a navy jumper, crisp collared shirt, white knee-highs, and black Mary Janes. I anticipated fun-filled mother daughter shopping sprees but I soon came to see our trips into the department store changing rooms revealed much more than size 4T panties and undershirts. I found that with each outing I was becoming an observer, an outsider almost, watching Julia’s relationship with the full-length mirror, far more aware of herself than I had ever realized. She was giddy and nervous and excited and petrified, face flushed, movements endearingly clumsy with a sense of herself that went beyond me, beyond her four plus years and worlds away from what I was ready for. It was a budding of her independence that left me feeling more than a bit helpless and lost.  

When the dewy September morning finally arrived, everything was going according to plan. It was just like any other day, really, as the three of us went through our routine of coffee, the morning paper, hot cocoa and a morning cartoon. On the way out the door, we took a few pictures with the neighbor kids, beginning the tradition of the front-yard first-day-of-school snapshot. I remember doing this year after year when I was a child, my mother lining me up with the all the kids on my block, and I still have the pictures to prove it. So it felt comfortable on this day to have a minute to savor the milestone with our dear friends across the street, parental nerves skyrocketing, children bursting with wild excitement.  

After a short, uneventful minivan drive, we parked near the school playground. Walking the sidewalk path, crossing over to the blacktop through the heavy chain linked fence and standing by bungalow 28, Julia’s new classroom, waiting for the teacher to motion the kids to line up –this all felt foreign, yet I knew it would soon become routine. A few familiar faces of friends and neighbors helped take the edge off the emotion we were all feeling, and as it was time to enter the classroom, Julia remained cool and composed. The teacher met each family, one at a time, at the door, escorting each child in and leaving parents outside to watch and wave anxiously. There we all were, acting as if we were actually happy to see our babies walk away blindly from the security of all they’ve known, toward a new beginning, a strange new world of learning and growth and relationships and the most frightening of all for us, independence. It seemed like most of us were expecting the worst, or maybe more accurately, secretly hoping for the worst. Perhaps if our child clung or cried, we’d be the chosen parent, invited into the room to make the transition easier. I think we all wished we could go in. I know I did. The whole standing at the door thing made it all the more excruciating—every parent could see his or her child stepping over the threshold into the classroom, and I couldn’t help but think of the symbolic milestone it stood for. I recalled similar feelings on the day of first day of preschool but this felt so much bigger than that. Preschool still seemed small and cozy, some kids still in diapers, graham cracker and apple juice at snack time, soft carpets for naptime where blankies and thumb sucking were accepted. But now, in the Land of Big, Julia resembled Alice in Wonderland entering a large and looming fairy tale world.  

When our turn in line came, Julia introduced herself to the teacher, and then looked up at me like a frightened animal, whispering a hesitant “Mama.” I took that as my cue and quickly leaned down, and while caressing her face, kissed her soft cheek and choked out a one-breath, run-on sentence, “You’re going to have a great day, honey, I love you and I’ll see you very soon.” My husband knelt and did the same and together we watched, in slow motion, as the teacher took Julia’s hand and led her inside to the group of kids huddled together on the rug. From what I could see, there was no crying but we opted not to wait around, hoping that being out of sight might help squelch the possibility of a delayed outburst. As we walked away from the schoolyard my husband and I looked at each other in disbelief. I finally exhaled, deflating myself like a huge balloon and murmured, “Wow, no tears from her, or from me,” even as my bottom lip began to quiver. My husband mused, “And I even brought tissue.” We embraced at the corner and went our separate ways- just another day.  

As I walked alone to my car and headed home, I felt a wave of intense emotion rush over me, feeling for the first time the gravity of my daughter’s new status as a kindergartener. It felt so fresh, so palpable, and I realized it was the undeniable ache of loss. Since Julia’s birth, I’ve come to recognize this feeling and out of sheer necessity, embrace it, because of its constant presence in my life. I felt it the minute Julia was born, the first time she smiled at me, the first time she shouted “No!,” as she toddled her first steps, when she started ballet, and on every birthday. What puzzled me was how a sensation that felt so familiar could still break my heart. Along my journey of parenthood, what I have come to realize is that a big part of being a mother is living with a constant grieving that my daughter is one day going to move on, start her own life, and leave me behind. With every day comes another step; some days she moves away from me, some days she heads back, but in either case, Julia grows up with each fleeting moment and there is nothing I can do about it. The irony is that even if I had the power to stop it, I wouldn’t. After all, I am her biggest cheerleader. I encourage her to explore and discover, to try new things, to meet new friends, and venture forth from the nest. “Fly, little bird, fly! You can do it!” I exclaim inwardly, each time she contemplates a new step towards her independence. But amidst every reassuring nudge I give her, I find myself longing for the baby she once was; her head fuzzy like a peach, the intoxicating smell of her baby skin, her dimpled hands, and fat feet.   And as I pulled into the driveway and entered my house I stood quietly and listened for a minute, almost believing I’d hear my baby bellowing from her crib, or clomping around on our hardwood floor in her sparkly red dress up shoes, squealing with delight as she chased the cat down the hall, as if somehow, if I daydreamed hard enough, she’d reappear. Could that baby, my sweet tiny baby, be the same long, lean, beautifully grown-up girl who gallantly walked away, with her new teacher, into her new classroom, at her new school without even looking back?   I sat down at the computer to begin work and my horoscope stared me in the face. The words jumped out at me: “Winning and losing are both part of the same endless rhythm.” I smiled, shook my head and began to weep. I couldn’t have said it better myself.