I mean, just ♡♡♡♡
As Jr’s start date for Kindergarten looms ever-closer, friends and family and fellow moms have sent me links to many “open letter” type articles and blog posts…
Posts with titles like “On your first day of Kindergarten,” and “To my baby as she goes to school” and “The day my youngest started Kindergarten” (none of these are exact, but you get my drift, yes?)
In the past I have read these offerings fondly, I have even sent them on occasion as parents who have blazed the trail before me sent their respective littles off to Kindy and beyond.
I am here to tell you that I love each and every one of you who have sent those pieces… and I love and respect those who have so eloquently written them.
But people, I can’t read that shit right now.
Straight up, yo – I am like, barely hanging on by the grace of God and Chardonnay and a substantially unhealthy decent amount of denial.
It brings “I can’t even” to a new level.
Monday Jr started his last week of Pre-k at the day care center he has attended since he was 1. I cried my “waterproof” mascara off TWICE before 9 a.m. that morning. (I haven’t bothered trying to put it back on since.)
I woke up at 3 a.m. today, and I went into his room and turned on his soother and just sat in the glow watching him sleep. (How much would that mess him up if I was THISCLOSE to his little face and he happened to wake up!? Screw saving for college, we should save for therapy.)
And this is just me, left to MY OWN thoughts on the subject, which are always scattered and fragmented and not all organized and beautiful and all of the things that the authors who wrote those posts and articles offer up so amazingly well.
If I read just one of those heartfelt examples, I have zero doubt that I would be reduced to a simpering, sobbing puddle of mom who runs to find Jr and tackle him in a heap of smother-hug on the floor, and NEVER gets my mess of a self up again, forevermore.
Because I think part of what is (barely) keeping me from losing it just now is that I kind of CAN’T put all of this into words….
I look at him this week and I see the eyes that have glanced curiously back at me, color matching my own perfectly, since minutes after he was born. I hear echoes of his in-utero heartbeat on my stork radio monitor, feel the cozy calm of his nursery enveloping us with the city bustling below our beloved highrise “treehouse,” his first home. I smell his tiny baby lavender bath wash, taste every tear I have cried in fear and frustration and joy for him- all in an instant.
I see also in those eyes his entire future. The first inklings of his hopes and his dreams. The challenges he will face, the obstacles he will overcome…. The love and the loss and the joy and the pain and the terrifying, beautiful BOUNDLESS promise that lives in that 40 lbs of human whirlwind.
I see it all. And I lose my words.
And I think it is saving me to know that for now.
I swear I will start a Pintrest board for all of those (no doubt awesome) posts, and I will read them around Halloween, when all of this is normal and routine and I can be only a semi hot mess mildly teary and slightly nostalgic about the next few weeks.
Right now it is way, WAY too much. Right now words aren’t tools, they are weapons coming at my tender mom-heart.
There is room in my little corner if you want to join me for denial, prayer, and Chardonnay, my fellow Kindy moms…..
No Kindergarten mom articles allowed though…. We don’t have enough tissues or box wine for that shit.
Reluctantly Suburban 