This is the moment I've been waiting for, isn't it? Kindergarten is right around the corner for my son, Sam.
Freedom!
It has seemed like a mirage on the vast horizon for six-plus years. I never really thought this day would ever arrive, just as I was sure Sam would stay an infant forever.
I just couldn't fathom that the little bundle of joy would evolve into a rambunctious boy who uses words like "technically," is obsessed with Legos and knows the two "Star Wars" trilogies far better than I do. (Seriously, who is this Darth Maul person, anyway?) Now he's old enough to have smelly socks and bad breath, a baby no more, a boy ready to climb onto the big yellow school bus Tuesday morning.
So if this is what I've been looking forward to for so long, then why do I tear up when even thinking about it? I know, I know — there is a tangle of emotions involved, especially for a stay-at-home mother with one child to raise, mother and smother, as the case may be.
On one hand, it will be the ultimate liberation to have five days a week from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. to think a complete thought, eat a complete meal and enjoy a complete telephone conversation. And I'll love to be able to write for more than a 10-minute stretch without also listening to the Berenstain Bears or hearing, "Hey, Mommy, look what I built!"
And to think, I'll be able to do two consecutive errands without a mutiny from the back seat.
Ah, what bliss! What's not to love about that?
On the flip side, it is also the ultimate letdown as a parent; all those years of care, attention and encouragement, just so he can go off and leave me?
It's the cycle of life.
The role of parents is to take their kids from a state of utter dependence to complete independence. After all, I don't want him living in our basement when he's 30, right?
In my mind, the grueling nature of tending to a newborn is God's way of shaking you by the shoulders to realize what a huge responsibility you have undertaken.
Now, the march toward kindergarten is a whole other kind of reality check on the wild ride of parenthood. I realize Sam is neither "mine" nor any kind of extension of myself. He is his own separate being who has grown from the size of a bean pod on a fuzzy sonogram picture into a boy well on his way to being taller than me.
When you ask Sam what he wants to be when he grows up, he replies, "Just a daddy. And I want to work at home so I can play a lot."
Someday he'll be putting his own child on the bus for the first time. And so the cycle of life will continue.
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