Off to School

I won the Mother-of-the-Year Award this morning as I bustled around getting Twila ready for her first day back to preschool. I was up early getting her outfit ready, I made her favorite food for lunch (macaroni and cheese with ketchup) and I even left enough time for pigtails and a quick photo shoot on the front lawn. It was the book bag that gave us trouble. I searched high and low, beginning to panic, not wanting her to be late on her first day of school. Finally I found it at the bottom of the coat closet with a variety of art projects from the last day of school last year. A painting, a tissue paper collage, and a pirate hat whose glue hadn’t dried by the time it was time to go home but was now as dry as mortar, fusing the hat to the inner seam of the book bag.

But she made it. She is at school in a brand new classroom, with a few kids from last year and a few new ones. She was brave and confidant and only a little nervous, as Ryan and I dropped her off and said good bye.

The summer felt so long in it’s many hours to fill; but vanished like a too-short night sleep. I didn’t see this time coming, forgot what it was like to have quiet in the house for a few hours every week. Jada is playing now and Ryan is working and I get to do something with only one child to entertain and care for. And somehow that feels like a fantastic break.