Summit starts his second year at Kid’s Day Out tomorrow. I find myself excited and sad at the same time. Actions and emotions that I once mocked I both do and feel. I get his blankie with his name embroidered on it nicely folded by his name embroidered stephen joseph backpack. Emotionally, I write his name on sippy cups and lunch boxes. I check and re-check the packing list. I make him a special turkey, cheese and ranch pita sandwich. I cut up a string cheese. I wash grapes and blueberries and pack up animal crackers. Ben watches me. “That is enough food for two lunches for him,” he remarks and I snap back at him.
Sometimes I want to keep my baby at home with me, to protect him from the world and shelter him from harm. Even if the supposed harm is Christian church program. I wonder how mothers let their normal children go to day care and preschool, what precious little treasures we have! They learn and grow even apart from us and that is a difficult thing to swallow. I want to see him, want to make sure that the kids don’t pick on him, I want the teachers to love him and treat him different… yet my lips sealed up at the open house when I longed to tell the teacher my baby is different, but please don’t treat him any different, no please treat him very special because he IS! and I would have just scared her.
Life is so deeply, wonderfully, beautifully flawed. I drink it up, then stagger around with the weight of it.
Ben thinks I’m crazy as I try to explain how I am jealously resentful of his teachers who get to spend time with him, to share those precious seconds of life with him. I don’t send him to this program for me, I do it for him. It is good for him to be in a structured setting. It is good for him to be without me for a little while. It is good for him to be with other kids his own age. It is good for me to be away from him and have a life other than Mommy. It is good. (It is good.)
Comment if you totally know what I’m talking about! Or, at least, try to make me feel less crazy here!