Time for Cool

Except it’s not cool.  Not at all.  How is it that I’m already looking at preschools for Eli?  Not only that, I’m late to the game.  I should have been looking late last year (to be fair, I was in L.A.), and trying to register him in January.  Oops.

Instead, about two weeks ago, it suddenly occurred to me that if we were indeed going to send him to preschool this fall (and we’ve been on the fence about this), that I needed to get on my shit and get this thing done.

The organized, practical part of me kicked in and was like, “Right, I need to get some recommendations, do some research, and go visit some schools.  We’ll go from there.”

The emotional part of me has been freaking out about sending my child off to school, even if it is only four + hours a week.

It’s easy to rationalize not sending him.  He won’t be three until Halloween, so is close to the cut-off point age-wise anyways.  I’m not in any hurry for Eli to be “schooled” in the traditional sense. Why not wait another year?

But, I would be lying to myself if I didn’t acknowledge the fact that I think Eli would love going to school.  I know he would have so much fun and that in and of itself is reason enough for him to go.  It would be good for him for lots of other reasons, too, but knowing it’s something he would enjoy is what is pushing us in this direction.

So, I went to visit a school with him.  I told him the night before we were going to school the next day.  The first thing he said to me the following morning when I entered his room (with a huge smile on his face to boot) was: I go cool?  I go cool?  He was so excited about going to school.

Eli is going through a bit of a shy phase right now, so although he was completely psyched about the playground, sandbox, and toys in the classroom, he was less enthralled with all the kids there, not wanting to get close to their “morning circle.”  Even the flirty grin of a little girl (which was melting my heart) did nothing to encourage him closer.

It cannot be overstated how emotional this entire visit was for me.  It was only that, a visit, and yet already I could envision the first day when I would have to drop him off for real and what a blubbering mess I was going to be, and how would I hold it together for one second if he was a blubbering mess and didn’t want me to go, and…

Several times I had to remind myself simply to breathe.  Calm down. 

This is the first in about 1,113 steps of letting my children go. 

And as resistant as I sometimes want to be in these instances, kicking, screaming and fighting every step of the way, I have to remember that I cannot stop time.  I cannot stop my children from growing up and away.  I know it will break my heart a million times as they take their independent steps, each one taking them further away.  At the same time there are moments of intense pride and an ever-deepening awe as I watch Eli grow into an amazing boy. 

I often compare parenting to being on a rollercoaster.  And while there are certainly ups and downs, the comparison isn’t quite apt because often the ups and downs are occurring at the exact same time (which as far as I know isn’t possible on a rollercoaster, yet).  So I am concurrently excited for Eli to have this new experience and devastated that he won’t be home with us all the time.  I am thrilled to have him spend time with other children and paranoid that he will pick up some horrible tidbits from them.  I am forever curious to see what life will bring next for Eli, and disappointed that I won’t get to share all the new discoveries with him (something I adore doing with him right now). 

I feel like I’m going to miss out on so much of what he’s learning in life. 

I’m going to feel left out.

I don’t know if this gets easier as he gets older or not.  Sometimes I rationalize it by saying, “well, it’s because he’s still so young and impressionable,” that’s why it’s so hard.  Or, it’s important to me that his immediate family be the ones shaping him, helping him to learn his rights and wrongs, his manners, etc. 

Now, for part of the day at least, we’ll be the ones on the sidelines, having to trust that he will be in the care of people that have his best interests in mind, that will lead him down a path I would agree with, that will take care of him.

It’s scary.

I’m eternally grateful that I’ve been able to stay home with my kids so far.  Sure, there are days when I want to go hide in the attic and let them figure it out for awhile.  Generally, I try to burn each moment into memory because those moments are passing by at lightning speed, and now we’ve enrolled our first-born into preschool for the fall. 

Next week, he’ll be graduating from college.  The week after that we’ll be meeting the love of his life.  The week after that?  Grandchildren.  See, this is all going way too fast.