It has been a year since I last posted, though if you could read the outstanding drafts I've kept in my head I'm sure you'd be impressed with the year we've had. But I'm so busy with the living of it, I haven't much time for the telling of it.
The first day of school has once again come and gone. My little ducks are in 3 different schools this year: elementary, middle and high school. HIGH SCHOOL!! I know. (Also note the absence--for the first time in over a decade--of preschool. I know). I've got daughters in 2nd and 4th and a son in 7th. Last year, the boys (first day of preschool, first day of middle school) took center stage. This year it was the oldest and the youngest--freshman in high school and kindergarten, respectively. My babies--the biggest and the littlest. How momentous.
Typing it now, many weeks removed from the first day, I feel a bit sentimental again, but at the time I was a bit less so. Partly because the whole kit and caboodle of them were so darn ornery and destructive in the last 2 weeks of summer (and I'm not even home with them! God help us all if I were!) that I nearly kicked their cute little uniformed fannies out the door on the first day. "Go on," I would have said. "Grow up. I need you OUT OF THIS HOUSE! Only 9th grade and kindergarten and.... whatever the rest of you are starting? WHAT IS TAKING YOU SO LONG TO GET THIS OVER WITH?"
But 3 weeks later, watching them settle into their routines, I'm still a little shocked over the pace of this whole thing. At the rate we're going, I'll be moving Clayton into college before I finish this post. Slow. It. Down. (And also, clean up the kitchen and pick up your own darn socks once in awhile. But I digress).
From the beginning, they have both felt as if they didn't belong to me. Surprises both, and both bursting into lives that were (we thought) settled and relatively certain (ha!) Both of them taught us so much. One started this reckless ride, the other reminded me that motherhood--and life--is nothing if not humbling and, oftentimes, rather shocking. Both altered my body and my perspective enormously. With her, I threw up for three months, feeling as though I were sharing my body with a hostile alien. With him, I gave up on any notion of control, once and for all, felt my spirit break and be spectacularly renewed as we redefined our marriage and our family around just one more.
Both are fair as the sun. We never looked as though we belonged to one another, their pink and white skin, blue eyes and white gold hair nestled against my brown shoulders and nearly black hair seemed sort of silly almost. Or, like my brother in law once said upon seeing me in a photo with my very fair Irish cousins. "Dawn looks like the Mexican babysitter." Indeed.
When I was handed both in the delivery room I remember a moment of pause, "That one can't be mine," I thought. And I spent weeks afterward searching for some genetic indication that I had contributed some tiny thing to their biology. Later, as their personalities emerged, I kept looking. She with her timid, eager to please attitude, he with his brash, rowdy charm and incongruous shyness. Neither of them quite matched. It was a stretch to find myself in them.
But oh, how I loved them--love them still. You can't love any of them best, and I don't. But there's a special place for the first and the last. A big chunk of my heart that I'll never share with anyone else belongs to them.
So, Grace has started high school and Clayton has started kindergarten. High school! Kindergarten! I know I should feel more weepy and sentimental, and I do, sort of. But I also feel like I used to at the end of each pregnancy--like it's TIME. A friend of mine once told her unborn son, "there ain't room in here for 2 of us" and that's sort of how I feel about keeping them in middle school and preschool. There isn't room in those places for them anymore. They've outgrown them. By extension, I guess, so have I. We are running out of space and patience and (ahem) grace where we are right now. Birthing ourselves into the next phase is sort of painful, but it's NECESSARY.
Clay needs the structure and the chance at independence. He needs to get up every day and wear shoes that tie and go to Mass with his class (with no one to hold him! And he can't go to sleep! And he can't take off his shirt!) He's ridden the baby train long enough. It's time to get off at kindergarten station and start the journey (for real) to big boy town. No more excuses.
I can't really think of much more to say about Clay. Last year was the big step--moving out of his beloved in home daycare and into full time (all day every day) preschool. This year, he moved from downstairs to upstairs and has to wear a uniform. (He is so CUTE in his uniform--but it is such a relief to see him in something besides ninja turtle and minion t-shirts that I can't even muster much nostalgia). He has one of our favorite teachers in the school and is so blasé about the whole thing we are all issuing a sort of collective shrug about the launch of his academic career.
And Grace. Oh, Grace. As she matures I keep having to learn again that motherhood ain't no Hallmark card. How did I end up with such an unsentimental, straight shooting, scientifically literal thinking child like Grace? I thought maybe, maybe there might be some poetry there somewhere. But come to find out, it was a mathematical equation--a complex one well beyond my current ability to solve--but an utterly logical one for all that. I have these fantasies about her and I giggling over lattes and sharing heartfelt moments as she matures. Instead, I try hard to provide the stability and organization--the supplies and the clean uniforms and the permission slips--and not to feel hurt by her lack of outward affection. All teens are that way, right? And under it burns a love so fierce and urgent, it is all I can do not to throw my arms around her lanky form and weep.
The night before school started, I went up to her room before bed. She was coloring and watching Netflix.
"Hey," I said and sat down on her bed.
"Hey," she responded, glancing warily over her shoulder.
"So, are you ready for school tomorrow?" I asked.
"Yeah," she said.
"Are you nervous?"
"No."
"Excited?"
"Not really."
"How do you feel?" I asked.
"I don't know. It's just school," she said. "Can you leave now?"
I stood up and took her face in my hands. (See, these are things I do because one, I am a sentimental fool and two, I read too much, and that is the sort of thing mothers do in books). Grace sighed and looked up at me with a sort of studied patience. My eyes filled with tears. Her face doesn't have the clear, bright complexion of a toddler anymore and her mouth is full of braces. She stands nearly as tall as I do. But I could so clearly see the precious face of my sweet baby girl in that irritated teenager staring back at me. I kissed her heartily and left. I learned awhile ago that sometimes the most loving thing you can do is walk away.
So every day, she walks into high school and further and further away from me. The first day ended at 1p, and I had an important meeting to go to right after lunch. I tried to talk Chad into picking her up, but neither she, nor he, saw any reason why the babysitter couldn't just do it. If I thought it made even the slightest difference to her, I would have changed my plans. But it didn't, and I'm glad. She was confident and ready, which means I'm doing my job.
And Clay is big and he walks and talks (dear Lord how the child talks) but, like his teacher told me last year, "he's kind of a big deal around here" so I know he's got kindergarten totally covered with that machismo and charm.
The others are flourishing--begging me not to pick them up until the very last moment at extended care so they can spend more time with their friends, doing homework and complaining about school lunch and cranky teachers. They keep signing up for so many sports and activities that I'm sure I won't have a chance to slow down long enough to lament how fast these family years are racing by.
They never really belonged to me anyway.
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