Guys, I can’t believe – truly can’t believe – that I sit here in real time on Ti’s last day of Kindergarten. If you know me I’m simultaneously heavily sobbing and doing a happy jig. I spend a lot of my days wavering between wanting to freeze time and excited for them to get older so I could see who they will become and how our relationship will grow. I want to let them go and not at all. Today was a not.at.all day.
When this year started, he started with his age group in Pre-K but as the days passed and I’d ask him about school and making friends he had nothing to say. And because I know my kids and know that isn’t typical, I knew something was up. One day I saw him with his class and he looked giant-esque. Ti had built the Buckingham Palace of blocks, an elaborate masterpiece and the kid to his left was sucking his thumb; the kid to his right was banging blocks together. I realized he wasn’t connecting because somehow, even though he was their age, he was older.
I need very little to dive head first into the parent abyss so this kept me awake for days. So much of his life had already changed. We had just moved to a new school in a new country and now we were going to switch his class too? But what was the other option? Kindergarten? He was only 4. He’d be 3 months younger than the youngest kid. And then, because my mom brain lives in the center of Lunacy, this thought was the sour cherry on top: If we skip him ahead now, I lose a whole year with him later. Yep. My mind ran all the way straight to high school graduation. Because I go there.
I’m already vastly aware of how fast it all goes and yet I have no idea how we got here. Weren’t they just born… in the the Dominican Republic? And now we’re wrapping up our first year in Mexico?! Daughter will be a first grader, guys. A freaking FIRST grader. What?! I fall asleep at night knowing that Ti will come to our bed in the middle of the night and sleep coiled-up between my legs like a puppy. Sometimes, he grabs my hand or my leg and pulls it closer to him like a stuffed animal except it isn’t stuffed — it’s me. I am his comfort blanket. It is so incredibly uncomfortable and my back pays for it every morning. And I’m already dreading the day he stops coming.
The day that snuggling with me doesn’t even cross his mind. When he no longer needs to sleep in our bed because he’s fine in his. When he comes home from school and goes straight upstairs… and closes the door. The day he stops thinking that we, his parents, are the coolest. Gaaaasp. Or when he starts to push us away — because that’s what kids do when they get older. It’s what they must to do and what they should do to become their own people. I know all of this but daaaaaaaang, guys. It’s still hard. It still guts me. And now moving him to Kindergarten? Giving up time? I’d have him one more year, 365 more days, if I just held him here in Pre-K.
Held him here. Those words swirled around my mind for a good while. And I had to ask myself if choosing to hold him here would be for him… or for me?
There really wasn’t another decision I could make once I knew that answer. Keeping him here — in this grade, this moment, this phase, this time — wasn’t for him. It was for me. And as much as I’d love to keep him and his sister small, they aren’t meant to be small. They are here to play big and be brave and curious; confident and competent and capable. And we are here to guide them well and love them hard and make them strong and then let them go. I know this is easier said than done.
We tried him out in Kindergarten for one day and ultimately that would be the deciding factor. After some asking about his day and tooth-pulling for details — because kids 🙄 — he said, “Can I go back there tomorrow.” Le sigh. I turned my face to hide my tears (because, yes, I cry a lot). But you know what? I wasn’t crying for the year I’d lose in the future, I was crying for that moment knowing that Ti would finally be where he felt he belonged. And I’d give up anything — even time together — to know he was happy.
Special thanks to all of his teachers and administration for helping us me through this time and letting me cry in your office. (Guys, I wish I was kidding but I did actually cry in their office.)
P.S. The day I became a mom and are you an emotional runner?
