Yesterday Reagan, my adorable, precocious, witty, funny, intelligent, charming five-year-old had his preschool graduation. I knew, when my eyes started leaking after reading on his daily progress report a couple weeks ago that they had graduation practice, I was not ready.
I’m still not.
I asked my husband, only half-kidding, whose dumb idea it was to let five-year-olds go to KINDERGARTEN?? All of a sudden, time is flying — literally, flying — by, and I am completely powerless to stop it.
I promise you it was yesterday when we brought him home from the hospital, all 6 lbs., 6 oz., 19 inches of dimples and sweet baby skin. I remember that drive home, alternately wondering why in the world they let us actually leave with him, and thinking every car on the road was going to hit us before we ever walked in our front door.
All of the milestones since then — the walking at 10 months, the babble that many times only I could understand, the sleepless nights (so. many. sleepless. nights), the baby giggles, the toddler years, the first trip to the beach, his first day of pre-school, his first Christmas program — everything has come and gone in the blink of an eye.
I asked a friend, who raised successful children, if he had any advice for us, soon after Reagan was born. He said, “The days are long, but the years are short.”
He wasn’t kidding.
Suddenly, this sweet little boy who rebelled against the very notion of falling asleep without one of us in the room, is getting ready for KINDERGARTEN. I’m not sure how it’s possible. It feels like, once it’s kindergarten, it’s college. While that’s a slightly dramatic exaggeration, in some ways, it’s not. From now on, his schedule from Monday to Friday is his. It’s not mine. It’s not ours. It’s just his. He will spend more of his day away from me than with me. He will have entirely new experiences that have nothing to do with me. He will attach to people I don’t know, and find his way, without me.
I will do my best, believe me, to instill in him good values and good morals in the time I have with him. But suddenly I feel like I’m helping him cram for life, and I just want time to please slow down.
Maybe I’m not ready to be a mother to a little boy not in preschool. Maybe I’m not ready for the big life lessons, the big questions, the big decisions.
But as I learned yesterday, time isn’t waiting for me to be ready. He keeps getting bigger, and more mature, and more independent.
For all three years we’ve lived in this house, at the cul de sac, his boundary has been a fire hydrant. He could ride his bike or walk (OK, run) to the fire hydrant, but no farther.
A few weeks ago, he asked if he could go a little farther down the street, to a blue truck usually parked outside a house two doors down from us.
“Yes,” I said, reluctantly. “But turn around and come right back.”
Now, every day, he goes to the truck, and comes right back. Soon, it will be something else, a little bit farther. A little more away from me. A little more on his own. A little more independent. A little less dependent on Mommy.
Still, for now, he’s still young enough, and sweet enough, to stop and give me a kiss on his way down the aisle, while Pomp and Circumstance played. And I still have the summer, and you better believe I’m going to savor every minute of it.
