First day

It’s Monday morning and I’m sitting at home on my own for the first time in years: Mo started school today, and Hazel’s spending her first half-day at preschool. I should probably be reading my textbook, but I’m too distracted to concentrate on statistics.

Hazel walked into her classroom as if it was a regular Monday morning thing for her to do, and only thought to come back to kiss me goodbye because her teacher mentioned it. At the school, Moses bravely shook hands with his new teachers and unpacked his bag. And then he cried as we were leaving, and I blew him kisses through the window and looked away before he saw my tears and fought off the urge to run inside and rescue him from the scariness and take him back to preschool where he knows his way around and has friends to be silly with and doesn’t look so lost.

I keep picturing Mo’s face as we left and feeling my heart break all over again and worrying that we’ve chosen the wrong school and that he’ll sit on his own at lunchtime today and feel lonely and sad, and that he’ll be just as anxious tomorrow morning and the morning after, and that he’ll be talking about this experience in therapy when he’s in his 30s. I want to be able to control everything so that he never has to feel sad and lonely and lost and scared. This hurts.

It’s hard handing your kids over to the world and hoping that the world will be kind to them. I’m simultaneously excited about how much they will learn and grow and become independent, and terrified about how much they will learn and grow and become independent.