I have so much to say, but life hasn't slowed down enough for me to write it. This whole month -- or in some sense, for the past three years -- I've been anticipating this day. With excitement, with sadness, with pride, with dread, all at different times, all mixed up in a muddle. I've been crying on and off for a week, and if I had more time, I could explain all the reasons behind the cliche (at least my version of it, which involves a lot of sadness that my era as a stay at home mom is drawing to a close, a heap of regret for a job half-done, and a fair sprinkling of identity crisis).
Presently, with 9 hours to go until the start of kindergarten, I have abandoned all internal conflict, and submitted to a firm state of denial. Though her backpack is hanging here next to me, and though her lunch is packed (in the new lunchbox I gave to her in joy then cried over later, thinking of my tiny baby in a giant chaotic cafeteria trying to open the various containers), I can't quite believe it. Off she goes. She's so ready, but I'm not sure I will ever be.
Ah, so much more to say, but 6 a.m. comes extra early in this late-riser household, and Hazel is awake waiting for me to take her back to bed.
Now, in tears, I leave you with Larry's ever-gentle rejoinder from earlier:
"She's not exploding. She's just going to school."
True. But somehow I can't help viewing it as a beginning and also an end.
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