The Graduate

There was no pomp and circumstance. There was no chinsy robe or anything. He wore a cute paper hat that looked like a cap but no tassel. Yet, he’s still a graduate.

As I explained when we went to his first orientation into kindergarten, I wasn’t feeling very sad about the whole thing. He goes to two and a half days of school, five days a week now. The only difference is that it will now be at a school that he will stay at until he’s in sixth grade.

The thing about having three kids under the age of five, it sometimes makes you rush through some of these more dependent stages. I’m ushering them off to school in a way that I might have held on longer if I weren’t so damn overwhelmed. I’m encouraging independence in a life saving (mine of course) sorta way.

So when my first born stood in the gym and sang his little songs while wearing his paper hat, I was a little surprised with the surge of emotions I was feeling. I felt like I had been dragged into a cheesy music video where suddenly all these pictures and memories of Drew as my little baby flooded before me.

I wish there was a way to encapsulate moments, times in our kids’ lives that we can open up and revisit. I’m so overspent, sleep deprived, patience shot, and frustrated that it’s impossible (I know people may argue this but I’m telling you IT IS IMPOSSIBLE) for me to just love the phase we are at. This by no means does not mean that I’m not enjoying select moments, but my days are HARD.

I loved Drew making all the hand motions to go with the songs. I loved that he mouthed to Adam, “where’s Mommy” and when he saw me he frantically started waving. I want to bottle that up (his actions and my feelings) and revisit them. I want to go back and feel what it was like when he was our only everything. I want to hold his little chunker baby body and look into his beautiful eyes to the time before I knew that parenthood would become so hard, my relationship with him would be so complicated and my heart would swell and break at the same time so often.

As he takes this step to his formal education, I know this is another step away from me. He will continue to develop his life and his world away from me. It makes my heart hurt in a way that I can’t do anything about. It makes me feel claustrophobic because I can never go back in time to that baby or toddler he used to be. And it makes me sad because I know all these days with my two other babies are spent in a world of so much stress that all these special days are going to be even more cloudy than those with my preschool graduate.