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| Getting good at letting go. |
| 09.05.06 (4:16 pm) [edit] |
|
It is September. The sun looks different as it shines through the window and the weather is almost cool enough for flannel sheets. I get up early, throw on an old hooded sweatshirt, make a cup of tea and sit in the great room looking out at the garden and the last of the tomatoes. It is quiet and I’m soaking it in before I gather up the ingredients for pancakes. I like to look at them for a while before I wake them up. I wonder what they are dreaming about and what the year will hold for them. I hope that they will get a teacher who still loves her job…one whose classroom welcomes them with posters of Clifford the Big Red Dog and a border of brightly colored apples around the blackboard. I kiss them awake. It’s never too hard to get them moving on the first day of school. Breakfast goes quickly because there are a lot of wardrobe decisions to make. We sorted through the school supplies the night before; dividing notebook paper and writing their names on Elmer’s glue. We leave a little early so I can take their picture in the front yard—another year, another hairstyle. There is an art to keeping them balanced under the weight of the backpacks. It is scary letting them go into the big, bad world; fighting it out all on their own. You want them to make friends and be accepted. You want to protect them from getting their hearts broken. I think that I am having a physical reaction to the fact that it is fall and I am all out of first days of school. No taking the tags off clothes from the GAP, no smell of freshly sharpened pencils…no kissing them awake. We don’t think about that when we have children--that every single day we are a day closer to having to let them go. Our purpose is to prepare them for life without us and the better we do our job, the more independent they become—and our victory may to some degree become our sorrow. Luckily—we don’t have to do it all at once. It starts with their first step and progresses from there. We let go of the back of the bike, allow them to cross the street by themselves, and reluctantly give them the keys to the car. The first day of school is merely a reminder of these steps; a ritual of separation. It is September. The sun looks different shining through the window and I’m putting the flannel sheets on my bed. I got up this morning, put on an old hooded sweatshirt, made a cup of coffee and looked out the bedroom window at fishing boats on the lake. It is quiet and I am soaking it in—but in a different way. There are no pancakes, pencils or bottles of Elmer's glue but, as I look through a pile of pictures documenting the journey from first step to empty nest, I realize that I have given them the one gift that they will truly require…I loved them enough to get good at letting go. |
posted by: judypatooote (reply)
post date: 09.05.06 (2:46 pm)
Maybe thats why i love fall so much.....I just went to Walmarts and bought a pack of pencils and a pencil sharpener, a big one that runs on batteries...it works great...I love going through that dept. I went home and sharpened the whole pack....and then comes the apples.....and the apple orchard.. .. Nice post Lori.....
posted by: FinalyFree (reply)
post date: 09.07.06 (2:57 pm)
I miss 'first day of school' chaos! I don't believe you can write a post that doesn't make me tear up.
posted by: cyrix (reply)
post date: 09.08.06 (8:48 pm)
i love this post.. brings back good old days like it's taking you down on a memory lane....
Grace, beauty, humor, strength.
Alison Haley Cloud
Nov. 16, 1987-March 1, 2005
