Kindergarten

First day of kindergarten is scary and yet exciting!! The anticipation builds for months and feels like you will explode if you don't get there quick enough. You secretly daydream about what it will be like and fill yourself with a vision that is kept to yourself. You play it cool and don't show too much emotion even when every adult asks "are you excited for school?" The weeks before you shop for new clothes and supplies, which only intensifies the curiosity and sparks concern over why you need certain items. Some items you may have never used before because in preschool you just don't do that kind of stuff. You color coordinate your items so you know what is yours and you never stop to think what if someone else has one just like it. You are in your own world filled with colorful pencils, shiny new folders, and smelly good markers. In your anxious state of mind you forget how heavy everything is until you get it all in your backpack, neatly labeled with your name and put it on for the first time as you think to yourself "this is it!" You are determined to carry that thing all by yourself even if you fall backwards because you don't want the others to think you can't do it. Besides for the past month everyone has commented on what a big kid you are now that you are starting kindergarten and you don't want to let them down. You pick out your first day of school outfit and get your new shoes ready. And as you drift off to sleep the night before you play it all out in your mind, the first day, what it will be like and who will be in your class. The next morning you wake up all on your own and practically jump out of bed. You feel good and that anxious bull in your stomach starts roaring. Breakfast, brush teeth, get dressed, is it time yet? Can the morning go any slower? Finally the moment when you step out the door backpack on, lunch box in hand, and feeling a little bit older then you did the day before, arrives and you are on your way. The hustle of getting there on time and weeding your way around all the other parents and students makes you a little uneasy but you are quickly reassured its only like this on the first day. You quickly try to remember where to put your stuff just like you were shown at orientation and you span the room looking at the other kids sizing them up and wondering if they know you have vampire teeth or a secret unicorn stashed in your closet at home. You might not talk to anyone but the teacher that day and lunch may not taste as good as your dinner will later that night but you know you have arrived when you sit at the table in the cafeteria and think to yourself "holy buckets there are alot of kids and the lunch lady doesn't look anything like the ones on tv!" Then at the end of the day when the most familiar face you know, the one you have seen everyday all your life, the one that tells you what to do (and you hate it) arrives to pick you up, you can finally exhale cause you made it through the first day of kindergarten and it was great!! To my darling children the tears I cry on these days are not ones of sadness but of bittersweet joy filled with the pride and love of knowing you your entire life and sending you off on your first right of passage alone and without me. I love you dearly. thanks for reading xoxo