Our First Day Back-to-School 2013

It’s time again…

After the summer we’ve been through I was ready to get back to school. We needed a change. I was feeling ready to move on.

In a surprising way, I was looking forward to this day. Today. Not because I wanted to get the kids out of my hair but because I was looking for a reset button.

A whirlwind of getting up, getting showered and dressed, breakfast, and making lunches passed so quickly it almost feels like it didn’t really happen.

The house has a stillness and quiet that it hasn’t felt for 3 months. Bite after bite I eat a delicious egg and sausage biscuit trying to swallow it past the lump in my throat. Before I even get to the fruit salad, salty tears are mixed with the sweet and tangy berries. And I can’t stop crying.

I’m not sure where these tears are coming from but this isn’t the first time they’ve come unbeckoned, making their watery entrance.

I wasn’t expecting it this year. I was thinking so practically about a reset button that the force of school beginning held off until this moment.

And now I miss them as I sit here, alone on the deck. Their voices chatting back and forth and the easy morning conversations with the crickets and birds and squirrels all competing against their din.

My alarm for DEAR time goes off (more on that soon) and tears involuntarily take over. again.

Thoughts of Emmett float to me, out of nowhere. His first day of preschool, the day he lost his tooth at Los Hermanos, and they take me away in a reverie of happy memories and then remind that there’s only one more summer before he’s a Senior. And I’m pretty sure I feel my heart stop and then break a little. Because all too soon, everything will change.

Grace walked straight to her class and got right to business, giving me 1/2 a hug. And I wonder how this happened…that a 4th grader is my youngest.

Now, I know this, these unbidden tears, will probably happen for the rest of the day.

This year Miriam said to me, “you’re not going to follow us into the school are you?” and that broke my heart just a little. Not because she said it but because I knew the day would come. Last year I knew I had gotten a bonus year of walking them into Middle school and the 6th grade auditorium. It had surprised me when they had said, “You’re coming in with us aren’t you?”

It’s another step toward independence which is always so bittersweet. It’s what I’ve raised them to become. And at the same time, every 1st day of school, I want to lock the doors of the van, before they have a chance to step out, and speed away. Laughing my evil laugh and saying, “You’re going to stay with me, my pretties! eeeheheehe!!!”

Not really.

Well, maybe…

Davina Fear is a Familyness Adventurer. Most mornings she can be found writing in on the sofa in her studio before beginning her day. Her favorite part of the day at the moment is when her kids clamor into the house from school.