Gunning for a Change

“It's very dramatic when two people come together to work something out. It's easy to take a gun and annihilate your opposition, but what is really exciting to me is to see people with differing views come together and finally respect each other.”

― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

Who knew Mr. Rogers would have such words of wisdom to help us deal with this week's tragedy?

In light of the Sandy Hook massacre, the airwaves have exploded with people for and against gun control. This is not a surprise. Even President Obama toed the line during his recent, emotional media address when he said, " And we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics."

The senseless shooting of 20 children and six adults at the elementary school in Newtown, Conn., was bound to reignite the debate about guns in America. On both sides, people are screaming. Get rid of all of the guns! Protect the Second Ammendment! Guns are ruining America! Guns are the only thing keeping America safe! And on and on it goes.

But as the president said, we need to put politics aside and figure out a way to keep shootings like this from becoming a regular occurance. Even Mr. Rogers agrees that we need to put away the weapons—metaphorically—and figure out how to remedy what's wrong in society.

I do not like guns. I do not own one nor do I want one. I will not let my children own toy guns or play video games that involve shooting people, characters or animals. I do not believe in hunting. We have been so desensitized to violence and weaponry that we no longer respect their power or their consequences. Children do not understand the ramifications of violence, and our society does not reinforce them, either. We are raising our children in a world that looks civil from the outside, but reeks of barbarity deep down. 

Petula Dvorak, my former editor at my college paper, wrote an excellent column at the Washington Post detailing how it's impossible to protect our children in a gun-loving and gun-accepting culture.

"We worry about the hormones in their milk, the violence in 'Spongebob Squarepants,' and yet this country tolerates the existence of a military-style assault weapon built for no purpose other than killing lots of people on a battlefield — fast."

Guns will never be abolished. Even if the government tried to take away all of the weapons and made owning guns illegal, there would still be guns. Prohibition didn't work, and there are still plenty of drugs around. So I'm not suggesting we toss out the Second Amendment, but redefine it in light of the modern world. In 1791 when it was passed along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, the world was a very different place. Advanced weaponry was a musket and gunpowder. Access to guns was limited. Militias were necessary. Times have changed.

I am fed up with gun advocates screaming about how their Constitutional rights will be violated if we add some definitions to gun ownership. Look at it this way…Someone vandalizes a church, and so now it stays locked when not used for services. Does that not infringe upon the Constitution and violate my First Amendment rights to practice freedom of religion? Does it not "prohibit the free exercise thereof?" Of course not. Nor does placing limitations on the Second Amendment. It's time to address the problem.

Usually, when a threat is identified, we react. Sept. 11 changed the way we travel by airplanes forever. And we welcomed the changes because it was done for our safety. But things didn't stop there. Someone tried to use his shoes to explode an airplane, and now we must take off our footwear as we pass through airport security. Same holds true for bringing liquid on an airplane. Can't do that anymore, thanks to the action of one person. Since 1996, there have been 52 school shootings in America, resulting in more than 320 deaths.

But what has been done? What changes or modifications have been made? None. It's time to change that.

Let the Supreme Court define "arms." Our Founding Fathers could not fathom such weapons of destruction as the semi-automatic Bushmaster Patrolman's Carbine M4A3 Rifle, available at your local Walmart. I admit there may be a need by some to own guns. But semi-automatic assault weapons? No one other than law enforcement and the military needs anything of the sort. And most certainly not for "personal protection." The general public owning these types of weapons is problematic. And who needs 19 guns at home for protection? No one.

The creation of required safety and skill classes taken by everyone applying for a license or purchasing a gun should be mandatory. As should the regular renewal of said license only with the completion of refresher courses. Getting guns through private sales or through gun shows without proper screening protocol needs to be illegal.

Yet even if we remove the more violent weapons, institute stricter ownership rules and mandate educational stipulations, we are still left with a burning question: WHO gets the guns. Background checks, you say. Sure, that will work if you are convicted of a crime. But what about those who have yet to get in the system? Or the ones playing on a different field mentally?

All too often, shooters in mass killings such as the Sandy Hook slaughter are mentally unstable. Who knows why these people (usually young, white males) decide to murder innocent people as an "answer" to their own tragic issues. Many times, we will never know. Keeping guns out of their hands is key. But as we saw with Sandy Hook, the alleged shooter, Adam Lanza, used his mother's legally purchased guns to kill children. How can we stop that?

By making some of these weapons impossible to own, by anyone.

Let's not forget, there's something else we can do. We can start at the source. Our country has demonized mental illness as shameful, something to be ignored, ostracized or hidden. Help offered can be unaffordable, unfathonable or unavailable. Why not start reforming the way we identify, treat and support those suffering from mental illness so we can prevent the escalation of problems that all too often result in what we witnessed Friday in Connecticut? Liza Long wrote an excellent blog about her struggles with her teenage son's mental illness. Getting these  people the help they need at a young age is crucial.  

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There are no easy answers to this complex problem.  I pray those in power will put aside the lobbyists and the money and the extremes and look at the facts. I  hope that they dig down to the source of this infection and figure out a way to at least start the healing so more school shootings do not occur.

Throughout the long days since Sandy Hook Elementary School made headlines, I have been swallowed up with shattering images, horrific news, heartbreaking stories. As has America as a whole. When we see the evil that destroyed a western Connecticut town and so many other areas before, we have to wonder what our world is becoming. It's beyond depressing.

And then, the wisdom of Mr. Rogers found me once more, and I felt comforted, even a bit hopeful.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of 'disaster,' I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”

So that's what we can all do now in this dark hour. We can seek good.

I choose to look for the helpers. I will focus on the heroics of the Sandy Hook teachers, the community that is rallying around its wounded, the compassion of parents nationwide and the countless others who say prayers of peace for all those affected. And I will focus on the helpers in government, like our president, who will hopefully be the ones who will find solutions to these tragedies so that someday, the term "school shooting" is extinct.

Long live the logic of Mr. Rogers. 

Car Wrecks and School Shootings

Written Dec. 15, 2012

Almost one year ago to the day, I totaled my car as I drove my children home from an appointment. Traveling on a rainy freeway, I hydroplaned, spun out and crashed into the center divider. In the moment, the shock and disbelief of it all kept the incident from being too frightening. Until I heard my kids shrieking in pure panic. I turned and saw my daughter, her eyes huge with terror, screaming. Then the fear slapped me. My children are in danger, I thought. My children are not safe. They could have been killed. Gone. In the blink of an eye. One minute we were talking about ice cream, the next, slamming into concrete. It all nearly changed that quickly.

Paramedics arrived, and a trip to the hospital followed. After a long, long day of tests and observation, we were all allowed to walk out of the hospital with very minor injuries. It was nothing shy of a miracle. The head of trauma surgery at the hospital reiterated how lucky we were. Amen to that.

The next morning, sore and bruised, I awoke to the sounds of my children laughing and playing in the family room with their dad. For a split second, I knew I was still dreaming. I knew I had lost my children in the accident the day before. I knew this was the first day of hell, the first day without my heart and soul.

But then I fully woke up, and realized my reality was not that hell, but the opposite. Pure paradise. My children were safe, healthy, alive. And in the next room. I cried tears of relief and sheer gratitude.

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All day yesterday, I remembered that moment of utter joy when I realized my nightmare was not my truth. And I physically ached for those parents at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., who were violently thrown into their own nightmares after a 20-year-old shooter terrorized the school and violently killed 20 children and six adults. Twenty children. All of them ages 6 and 7. My daughter's age. Kids just like my daughter. Just like her school friends. Kids who ate cereal for breakfast and looked forward to making gingerbread houses, who sported bows in their hair and shoes littered with scuff marks from hours of playground antics. Kids who wanted Legos from Santa and a dollar from the Tooth Fairy. Kids who bore the stamp of innocence and joy. Kids who would not be going home that afternoon, or ever again.

I couldn't get their images out of my head. Tiny little kids with the world ahead of them. Kids who were just like my daughter.

As a journalist, I was unable to turn away from the news coverage. I digested every update, each revelation in this constantly changing and confusing story. But as a parent, I yearned to stick my fingers in my ears, close my eyes and pretend none of this ever happened. The shooting of innocent children can't even be classified as a tragedy. It's an abomination, an act of evil so pure it's demonic. The journalist in me cried out for answers as to why the shooter did this, but the mother in me didn't want to know why. There is no answer that will suffice, no answer that will ever explain it all. And I don't want to live in a world where something this sinister can be easily explained.

I cried with President Obama—usually the "consoler in chief" in times of national tragedy— as he addressed the media. Never before have I seen a president display such emotion, and never have I seen this president give up his trademark silver-lining speech in light of mass tragedies; instead he adopted a weary, shocked and grief-laden tone, which made things even more grim. He said that these children "had their entire lives ahead of them -- birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own." And now, that's all gone. All of it. That gunman took it all away. Not just from those 20 children, but from their families and the entire community as well. One half-hour on a Friday morning in December ruined countless lives and changed a nation.

I counted the minutes until I could pick my daughter up from kindergarten. Getting to her fast enough was my main concern. Never have my arms physically ached to hold her as they did yesterday. When I arrived at her classroom, I felt more excitement than I did picking her up after her first day of kindergarten. I grabbed her tight, holding my son in one arm and my daughter in the other. I breathed in the scent of her hair, felt her smooth cheek against my palm, laughed as she ran off to chase her friend. Today would not be a day for scolding or cranky answers. Today was a day for cuddling on the couch and ice cream, for staying up late and eating French toast for dinner. For thanking God over and over for these little ordinary treasures like silly "poop" jokes and sounds of "Mommy, I love you."

I imagined over and over again what those parents felt as they received calls from the school, rushed to the chaotic scene, waited in agony to receive news about their children. And then receiving the worst news of their lives. The day those children were born, no one could have ever imagined their lives only had a six- or seven-year window. No parent, gazing into her newborn's squished and rosy face, would ever think a madman could snuff out the brilliant life just now beginning its journey. And at the second safest place they know: school.

And yet, that's exactly what happened. My mind bucks at this reality, refusing to accept it.

Parents across the nation felt unbelievably shaken and eroded as news of the Sandy Hill shooting permeated the media. As the president said, he absorbed the events not as the commander in chief, but as a parent. I did not view the scene with a journalist's trained eye, but with a mother's heart. I thanked God four dozen times in an hour for letting my girl enjoy an average, safe school day. I felt icy fingers of fear poke my gut as I considered how easy it would be for a travesty like the Sandy Hill shooting to happen in our own backyard. I prayed for those parents.  I questioned how in the world this could have happened in the first place. It hit the trifecta of terror: random shooting, elementary school children and 11 days before Christmas. The pain is an abyss felt by parents nation-wide, but especially and unthinkably by the parents of the slain 20.

As the news continues to unfold and the victims' names are released, we learn more about the children who were killed…and the teachers who did their best to protect them. Ever since I walked my daughter to preschool on that first day, I knew I was entrusting that teacher with the most precious creature in the universe. I am sure all good teachers feel this burden and are empowered by it. It seems many of the Sandy Hook instructors were, as they died protecting their students or risked their own lives to do so.

This morning, I woke up and enjoyed a peaceful half-minute before I remembered what happened. Yet on the heels of that crushing realization came bliss. Bliss that my children were in the family room, laughing and playing with their father. That nightmare was not my reality. There is evil in this world, there is injustice and there is darkness. But for today, I grabbed hold to the ray of light found in my children's laughter. That gave me hope and strength to send off as a prayer to those parents in Newtown, who will forever be changed, and who will forever be in our hearts.

Sweet Owen

                                                                                                                              Written Sept. 10, 2012

His bowl of last night's uneaten dinner is still in the refrigerator. I can't bear to throw it out. His collar is on the table where my husband placed it after he took it off his neck. His hair is still sprinkled all over the floor like snowdrifts.

But Owen is gone.

I keep looking outside on the patio to see him sunbathing in the grass or pawing at the back door, his ears pricked up and looking like the world's largest rabbit. But he's not there.

Dogs have been a constant in my life since I was 7 years old. And we've lost a few. But Sweet Owen is MY first dog to go. And it has slammed me to my knees, unexpectedly.

Everyone loses a beloved dog; everyone I know has. Why did I think I would escape this pain? Owen has been with me for so long, how will the days look without him? 

I'll be honest: Having three dogs, three part-time jobs, a psycho mortgage and two kids was often quite hard. There was always a living, breathing being needing me, or a deadline or a due date demanding my attention. Some days, that just taxed me. My most difficult days were the ones where a dog would pee on a box of blocks, or throw up in the house, or a kid would grab the markers and redecorate the couch or decide it was an awesome day to remove a filled-up diaper by himself—and these usually revolved around days I had to teach class or submit a feature story to a magazine.

But at the end of every day, I loved my dogs. Especially Owen. He was our first special-needs dog. In 2001, I had just launched my own freelance business, and I thought the time was perfect for adding to our family of three. Annie, my sweet German shepherd mix who found us in 1997, needed a buddy. But after months of searching every animal shelter in a 30-mile radius, I could not find the dog of my dreams: a female, black Labrador-mix puppy. Instead, my heart and mind wrapped around this anorexic-looking, teenage, male, white German Shepherd mix with anxiety issues. I will never forget how, at the first visit in the shelter, he bounded around his concrete kennel, looking all the world like a silly clown. Then, when I went back a week later, he was moved to a kennel far off the beaten path, and he appeared to have given up. Curled up on the floor, he looked up at me with his perpetually worried brown eyes, but didn't lift his head.

"How about we stop this nonsense and go home now," I asked him.

And that's just what we did 11 years ago Sept. 5. We met Annie and my husband at a nearby park, prepared to call everything off if the dogs didn't accept each other. One sniff was all it took and the two were bonded. Well, Owen was bonded to Annie, his idol. No matter where he went from that day forward, as long as Annie was with him, Owen was just fine.

I can remember having doubts about this poor pup with an obvious abuse history. Could I handle it? Would I fail him? A few days later, when Sept. 11 happened, I sat on the couch with both dogs right next to me, watching the horror unfold in New York City, and I realized I could handle anything this poor pup could throw at me. There were worse issues in the world.

For the next 11 years, we did just that. Handle anything. Owen had his problems, but what dog doesn't? He had massive anxiety, feared men in baseball hats, freaked out over fireworks, marked everything outside and way too many things inside, shed like an oak tree in autumn. But he was mine. As my niece once said, "Do all of your dogs have issues?" Yes, yes they do. I have a soft spot for the underdog.

In his youth, Owen was a constant source of merriment. We socialized the pants off that dog, helping him see that people can be nice and loving. He soon began to think that everyone should love him. I remember one time I had a repairman come to the house, and I asked, "Do you like dogs?" Sure, he said. So I opened the back door, and both Annie and Owen rushed in, bounding for the guy. The look of fear on his face was almost comical, especially when it evaporated after both dogs showered him in kisses and tail wags.

This dog, who we believe was part Whippet, could chase down a rabbit like no one's business. Unfortunately, they often didn't survive his attempts at playtime. When staying over at "Camp Grandma," Owen once caught a small rabbit in my folks' yard. He tried to play with it, but you all know how that turned out. So Owen went and got my mom, leading her to the deceased rabbit on the grass. He looked at Mom, then the rabbit, then back and forth, as if to say, "My toy broke! Fix it! What happened?!"

Owen wasn't partial about his playmates, either. He loved to nab possums off the wall, and some of those nocturnal creatures were nearly as big as he was! Owen could leap and snatch one off our 6-foot fence, not a problem. In fact, one time, he leapt so far, he wound up in our neighbor's yard, peeking his large rabbit ears into the door to say, "Hey, dude, I need some help here!"

Oh, and was he fast! When we first got Owen, he was a runner. Now that was scary—especially when he and Annie played Escape Artist one Christmas at my in-law's house. But soon, he learned that he had it good here, and we could leave the front door wide open without Owen stepping foot on the porch. The first time we took him to the dog park, he got spooked and took off running. Well, a spooked, running dog is nothing but prey for the other dogs, so Owen ran the perimeter of the park, with about two dozen dogs chasing him. He rushed to me, jumped into my lap, turned to the other dogs and then growled, knowing he was safe in my arms.

As he got older, Owen got crankier, less willing to play and happier to just hang out outside. He still loved a good rawhide and a spoon filled with peanut butter, but his dog park days weren't something he enjoyed anymore.

Unlike Annie, Owen never once had a single health issue. Aside from vaccinations and dental work, Owen didn't require any medical intervention. But his health changed this past weekend. Literally overnight. He began coughing late last week, which isn't anything that unusual. Something in his throat perhaps? He acted his normal, cranky, bouncy, goofy self. But when this coughing didn't clear up after a couple of days, I figured a trip to the vet was needed. It didn't seem to be an emergency; my mom came over Saturday and Owen bounded in the house, jumping on her and giving her kisses. (What a great kisser that dog was! Hugs, not so much. But he loved to give kisses.) Then Sunday, he just looked sick, within hours. His breathing took on more of a panting quality, and he didn't want to eat his dinner. I grew more anxious, thinking, "could he have kennel cough? Pneumonia? Could it be his heart? He is getting up there in age. But Annie is nearly 16! Owen is still a pup compared to her."

I set the alarm early so I could call the vet first thing, but when I walked into the living room at 7 a.m., I quickly realized it was over.

Owen was stretched out on his side, just like he loved doing on the grass, paws crossed. He mirrored Annie's position on the carpet just a few feet away. He was looking right at her, most likely the last thing he saw on this earth. Seeing him right there next to Annie, looking so peaceful, broke my heart. So many nights in this heat, Owen wanted to sleep outside on his own. I thank God I didn't put him out there that last night. It's one of the only things I don't feel guilt over.

I suppose feeling guilt and regret are normal when something happens unexpectedly to someone you love, to someone you are responsible for. Normal or not, I am consumed with such emotions right now. Every good thing I might have done for him, from rescuing him from the pound to taking him to agility classes, is eclipsed by the guilt I feel. Should I have called  the vet sooner? Should I have encouraged him to stay inside more? Was I too annoyed with him when he would wake me at 3 a.m. to go outside and chase possums off the back fence, or when he would pee on a toy or basket of clean laundry (I mean, really?)?

 I feel guilty because life has gotten so much more complicated than it was when I first brought Owen into our family. Did I let the crapstorm of life overshadow what really matters? Or did I appreciate him enough when he was here? Was I nice enough? Did he know how much I loved him? Did I spend enough time with him? How often is this fear muttered in the dark hours after someone dies? Too often, I am sure.

 I am consumed with the woulda-coulda-shoulda thoughts that often do nothing but eat holes in our heart.

I know I loved him, and I know I did right by him. I know no one, not even Mother Teresa, would be pleased and joyous when a dog pees all over freshly folded laundry, or when the whining of an anxious, possum-wanting dog wakes a finally sleeping newborn. But right now, waterboarded by grief like I am, I only see my failures and shortcomings. 

I am so grateful Sweet Owen went on his own terms, in his home and surrounded by all of us who love him. I am so thankful to him that we didn't have to make that dreaded trip to the vet for "the shot."

But most of all, I am so grateful he was with his Annie. For as much as I know he loved me, he lived for Annie. I am trying to take comfort that she was a source of peace for him as he crossed the Rainbow Bridge.

I once heard that there aren't dogs in heaven. That's crap. How can a place called Paradise be such without dogs? The movie "What Dreams May Come" features one scene that lifts my heart. Robin Williams' character dies, and as he's crossing a pasture in the afterlife, trying to get his bearings, out rushes his beloved dog, now fully healed and healthy and happy once more, tackling him to the ground and showering him with kisses. It's like that legend of the Rainbow Bridge: Our dogs wait for us over there to help lead us home. 

Sweet Owie, I will see you there, and I hope you're waiting for me with those big rabbit ears and lots of slobbery, on-the-mark kisses. You took a part of my heart with you, big guy. Oh, how I miss you!

Oh, the Places You'll Go

“You're off to Great Places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting,

So... get on your way!”

― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!

(Written yesterday, August 27, 2012)

 

Today was my girl's day. Kindergarten day.

I stayed up late last night, trying to get everything organized and compartmentalized so we could be on time for this first day of school (a huge accomplishment for me, O Tardy Woman). I cut her sandwich into dolphin shapes, filled her backpack, stuck a note in her lunch, made sure her outfit rested ready and waiting in my bedroom, charged all of the camera batteries.

I was ready.

In every way but the one that really mattered: my emotional state.

In the morning, it was me who awoke with a sense of dread. Anxiety blanketed me. I hate change. I often dislike new things, good and bad. I have been known to freak out royally when my schedule gets off-kilter. This morning, it felt like a first day at a new job—exciting, and terrifying. I tried to scoop away the sludge of panic and the urge to call everything off and go back to "normal." I had to be the strong mom. I had to be a leader and show my girl new things are new adventures. Even if I didn't believe that right then. So I began the day.

As I finished braiding my girl's hair, she placed her beloved new purchase on her head. A glorious pink sequined newsboy cap. She looked beyond adorable. And about 12 years old. Throughout the car ride to school, the insane parking situation (did I really need to park about five blocks from campus? Yes, yes I did), her brother's fussiness (thanks, little man, for staying up three hours past your bedtime last night) and the blazing heat at 8:30 in the morning, my girl kept that hat securely on her head. It just melted my heart to see her looking so grown up.

Merging with other parents, we were absorbed into the tide of backpack-clad five-year-olds pouring onto campus. All I saw was my girl swallowed up by her huge backpack, her skinny legs nearly jogging to keep up with her NBA-tall daddy, the sun glinting off that pink hat. I nearly began crying right then as we rounded the corner to the kindergarten wing. But I caught myself. No time for tears! I had to be there, be positive, for my baby. She needed me.

Rushing, we got to her new kindergarten classroom and everything then happened so fast, the dreaded drop-off became a non-event—for her. The teacher bustled students inside as I snapped off a few dozen photos. My girl walked confidently in the door, then turned around to look for us. For a split second, I saw the innocent confusion on her face before it dissolved into one of anticipation as she made her way to the backpack hooks and then the reading carpet.

I kept waiting for the regression into baby talk or the leg-clinging. I had a speech prepared about how amazing this new school experience was going to be for her (if I said it enough, maybe I'd start believing it too, I figured). I pictured myself walking her to the carpet, gently disentangling my hand from hers and planting a kiss in her palm just like "The Kissing Hand" story we read at orientation.

Instead, my baby girl skipped away without another glance back. All I could see was the gleam and sparkle of her pink newsboy hat. In that minute, the teacher instructed everyone to turn and wave goodbye to the parents. And it took all I had in me not to grab the tiny art table in a death grip and threaten anyone who dared try to remove me from the premises. Thankfully, I'm too frightened of acting a fool in public, so I allowed myself to be waved out of room K-2, but not before I rushed up to my girl, asking for one more kiss, one more hug.

How did it come to pass that it was me who needed comforting? That I was the one who gently had her hand untangled, who was kissed goodbye and sent on my way with a stoic smile? How was I the one internally kicking and screaming, demanding to be taken away from this new environment and placed back where I knew the rules, where I knew I was safe? How is this first day of kindergarten harder on me than my kindergartener?

I felt so out of place and lost as I made my way outside and shut the classroom door (and I swear it sounded louder than a gunshot in my ears). I knew a few of the moms, but for the most part, I only saw strangers. I felt so much like I did back in the seventh grade. A new kid in a new school surrounded by new people who knew each other. I felt completely out of place. I didn't even know the proper method for drop-off yet much less the rules of volunteering in the classroom or participating in fundraisers.

A few moms reached out to me with friendly gestures, and for that I felt grateful. But I ached for my preschool friends, the moms who saw me in the mornings without makeup or straightened hair, who watched me gain weight and then lose it after my son was born, who knew I'd be the first one to volunteer for the fire station field trip, who would text me funny pictures of their kids.

And that brought on waves of homesickness for my old routine, the preschool building, the teachers who knew my girl so well, lazy mornings watching "Sesame Street" on PBS, even the preschool parking lot! I missed yesterday.

Last night, I thought I was so prepared, but in reality, I wasn't ready in my heart for today. My daughter was, but not me. I kept wanting to run away, run back in time, run to the familiar.

My heart officially broke when, on the way back to my car, I passed the playground. There, having her snack, was my girl. Sitting ramrod straight on the picnic bench, eating her Pirate's Booty, that pink hat gleaming.

And she was all alone.

There was another little girl across the bench from my daughter, also eating her snack. So even though they weren't facing the same way or talking, maybe they were eating together in a preschool kind of way. At least, that's what I told myself.

Before I could hurdle the fence and rush to my girl's side, she confidently got up, tossed away her trash and walked to the playground by herself, where she climbed up the ladder to the jungle gym. Her poise and self-assurance astounded me. Again, how was she so comfortable in this new skin when I felt as jittery and jumpy as a crack addict? How was it that I needed her comforting to feel confident, yet she was fine on her own? She even saw me, huddling by the fence, and did a half-baked wave and a "Hi Mom" before ignoring me.

All morning long, I fought the urge to pull her out of school and homeschool her. Why not? I worried she had no friends. I worried the teacher wasn't nurturing enough for either her or me. I feared there were too many kids in her class. I didn't think I'd ever make new friends. I hated the horrid drop-off traffic jam. I ached in every fiber of my being to just pull the plug and bunker down at home, learning what we can in a sheltered environment.

Or maybe I could still get her in Catholic school! Some tiny kindergarten taught by nuns. Her whole school would have maybe 80 kids, and we'd know all of them and like each and every one.

I knew each of these obsessive, fantasy-fueled panic attacks was nothing more than a failed attempt to stop my girl from growing up, and to stop me from reaching beyond my comfort zone and trying something new. But I couldn't grasp that at the time. All I felt was this insane desire to shove the toothpaste back in the tube.

I had worked myself into quite the frenzy by the time I went to pick her up a few hours later. Full of anxiety, I arrived on campus 20 minutes early (no New York City gridlock at pick-up time. Good to know), and felt butterflies at seeing my girl again. I wanted to make sure she knew I was there for her. Or maybe, I just wanted her to be there for me.

The minute the kindergarten door opened, my girl came out, that cap still on her head. She stopped in her tracks, looked at me and said, "Where's Daddy?"

I was not ready to be so unneeded.

"How was school, baby?" I asked, fighting the urge to pout and cry and scream "He's at work where he goes every day. But I'm here for you! I'm here! I've always been here!" "Did you have fun?"

"I played with M," she said.

So she did make a friend! A new friend! My heart lifted. I stopped whining about whether or not my girl would like her teacher or if I would get yelled at for lingering too long in class or if I would make new friends or figure out where to park my car in the morning madness. Or even if my girl needs me.

This isn't about me. It's about her, and what's best for her. My "instincts" told me this morning to pull her out and squirrel her away at home. My instincts are whack. I've always known this, and yet I listen to them daily. I'm afraid. She is not. This is all about her. What's good for her. And what she wants. Which, right now, is to go back to school. To eat her snack. To play on the playground with M. And wear her sparkly pink hat. 

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Update

As I finish up this article, it is Day 2. I am still feeling such strong desires to pull her out of school and tuck her in my Moby Wrap so I can wear my girl all day long like I did when she was a newborn. But I'm putting one foot in front of the other and fighting on.

I'm talking myself down from the ledge and giving this new normal a chance. I am allowing myself some time to meet other moms, get to know the teacher, learn how I can help my girl enhance the lessons she's learning in school. I'm letting myself get adjusted. I can always change my mind later, but for now, I have to give this new change a chance.

As Dr. Seuss said, my girl has places to go, and it's my job to hand her the tools to lead her down the path. I'm not supposed to carry her or encourage her to sit on the side of the road. Even if I want to.

Today's drop-off was much more organized, and I thought I had it all figured out. Until my girl piped up from the backseat: "It's OK, Mom. Just drop me off and I can walk to school all by myself."

Oh hell no.

Twas the Night Before Kindergarten

Tomorrow, my baby girl starts kindergarten.

I knew this date was coming. Of course I did. I had it circled in red on my calendar since June. But at the beginning of summer, it seemed so far away. Probably because I really didn't want to think about it, and I had trouble even imagining it.

For the past three years, we've spent about three days a week in her beloved preschool program, so we are not strangers to organized education. But this just feels different. Sure, it's five half-days a week instead of three, but that's not what makes it seem so unique. It's just the word "kindergarten" seems to imply such a huge step forward in the growing-up process. It feels monumental.

Throughout the all-too-short summer, I've watched the girl play, swim, draw, tumble, run and laugh. And with each passing day, she gains more skills, grows more inches (sometimes overnight!) and is too quickly taking on the sounds and shapes of a girl. Not a toddler, not a preschooler, but a school-age girl.

She is growing up, like it or not.

Frankly, I'm terrified.

And kindergarten is putting a tangible handle on my fear. It's "real" school! With homework and tardy slips and big kids on the playground. It's the big-league, folks. How did we get here? Maybe we should take a time out and evaluate this.

This morning, the girl woke up with a stuffy nose. My first instinct was to keep her home from school tomorrow. And the next day, and the next. Maybe even start her in kindergarten next year.

"She's going," said my husband, reminding me gently that I'm going a bit nutty.

Not like that's anything new. As this red-circle date approached, I became more and more open to the idea of homeschooling her. Sure, it was only about a five-minute consideration, but I still contemplated it.

Let me set the stage. I probably should be a poster child for multitasking. Now, I didn't say I would be the model multitasker. Because in all honesty, I suck at it. But I am the queen of doing it. Just not well. I have three jobs, three dogs, two kids, a dirty house, a hungry mortgage, a confusing home budget and a to-do list a mile long, filled with scores of projects I need to and want to accomplish. And yet, most days revolve around me living in the kitchen, feeding little people and big dogs, and then cleaning up the messes that result. I scramble to meet deadlines and plan lessons for the college classes I teach. I try to be social every so often, but most days that just means I touch base with someone on Facebook. I look at my Franklin Planner and I see that I've had "start baby book" on my monthly goal list for four years. Some days, the only thing that gets crossed off my to-do list is "wash dishes" or "spell-check article."

And yet, I seriously considered homeschooling the girl. I could do all the amazing things I see some of my friends do (thank you, Facebook, for both inspiring and intimidating me). I could teach her the topics I deem important, like art and writing and spiritual studies and science. We could take field trips to police stations, newspapers, hospitals and post offices to learn how things happen. We could spend an entire day in a museum and call it school! It would be awesome.

And best yet, she'd still be home with me.

That's when I caught myself. Not only do we not have near the amount of money needed to provide therapy for the girl when she's 18 and thoroughly messed up from having me as her only teacher, but I would be homeschooling her for my benefit. Not hers.

I honestly do not think I can teach her the necessary fundamentals of education better than a trained kindergarten teacher can. I can enhance those lessons with discussions about art and field trips to the museum and talks about religion and all that. But my girl needs more than me to be a success in life.

That's my goal as a parent—to help shape this perfect, amazing little soul into a beautiful, responsible, intelligent member of society who benefits her community and beyond. She deserves the best, and me trying to add schooling her to my already insane to-do list is criminally unfair to her. She needs more, and deserves more, than I can give her. My wish to keep her here with me via homeschool or by pushing kindergarten off a year is pure selfishness.

So tomorrow morning, I will send her into the care and guidance of a teacher with years of experience, and I'll close my eyes, send up a quick prayer and hope that this will all turn out for the best. When we attended kindergarten orientation, I was a bit nervous. I really had no clue about any of the school's three kindergarten teachers. I had no idea who to hope we'd get. When I checked the class roster taped on the office door (something I can remember doing with my parents before each school year began), I wasn't sure if I should be excited or not. I was going in to this school year blind.

But that changed when we walked into the classroom. Beautifully flowing stations peppered around the huge, well-lit classroom. Puppets, books galore, art projects, tiny tables with tinier chairs, carpet squares, toy kitchens, a wall with poetry and math problems. I fell in love. As did my girl, who cozied up with a book immediately.

And then the teacher! Kids gravitated to her, even my oft-shy girl. Mrs. B's warm and structured aura seemed a perfect fit for the kindergarten sect. I wanted to stay in the classroom all day. As did my girl, who was the last one to leave. I took that as a good sign.

Having been reassured through the initial visit, I am still weepy at sending my girl off to school. It feels like the first step down the waterslide. Once I jump, I'm on a one-way speed trip to high school graduation, with no stops in between. On Facebook this summer, I kept reading posts from friends who sent their children to college this month, and how it "seemed like yesterday I walked you through the door of your kindergarten class." I know time speeds by, and I also know that I can't stop it. I can't stop my girl from growing up just by not sending her to kindergarten.

So I might as well plug my nose, take that step and enjoy the ride.

We'll see how well I do tomorrow. I will keep my emotions in check by taking an obscene amount of pictures and video, obsessing about how I can capture every moment on film. But then I will come home and absorb what just happened.

A large part of me wishes I was walking her back through the doors of her preschool tomorrow. I miss that part of our lives together. I'm still homesick for them. I miss the teachers, the friends, the schedule. I miss what I knew.

Yet now it's time to change. And oh, how I hate change! Another bending. I know something is ending so something new can begin, but it's still so hard to accept. Bendings! How I hate/love thee! 

So I am trying to do what I tell her to do: look at the shiny side. We have a new school to get involved with, new friends to make, new things to learn, new adventures to be had. Homeschooling her isn't the solution. Stopping time isn't possible. Stuffing her in a tower a la Rapunzel will only earn me a well-deserved visit from CPS. So the best answer is to stop fighting the inevitable and enjoy the party.

Or at least show up. Which is what I plan to do in the morning at the ungodly hour designated by the school district as the best time to start class. I'll kiss my baby's hand, I'll wave goodbye and then I'll probably cry, eat something horrifying guilt-inducing for breakfast and procrastinate on my work as I wait the four hours until I can be rejoined with my heart again. And all the while, I'll remind myself I'm doing the best thing for her because I love her. So why do I feel so sad? 

For the Love of Books

When I was a kid, personalized everything was the rage. Especially  barrettes  and those mini license plates you could put on the back of your 10-speed. But with a name like Kyra, I got squat. No store ever had any personalized trinket with my name on it. Oh, the injustice!

But in all seriousness, I knew how much I would have gotten a kick out of seeing my name printed on something other than my lunch sack or my homework. Maybe that's why I fell in absolute love with these "I See Me!"  personalized storybooks.

First, they are books. And you should know, I am a huge book freak. I toe the line of book psycho, actually. I have a room lined with books, I spend more time in the library than I do in my car, I would rather read than go out on the town. With my firstborn just starting to enter into the reading world, I find myself a bit giddy. My girl, from the start, has loved books, and now that she's showing interest in actually reading the words herself, I am pawing the ground in my enthusiasm to get this race going.

I've explained to her how reading opens up different cultures and ideas, how almost every answer in the world can be found between the pages of a book. Books have gotten me through my life, in good times and in bad. On unforgettable family vacations, I relaxed with a book on the beach. When I was sick, a book took my mind off my aches and pains. When I was in labor, yes, I brought a book to the hospital (but this time, I actually didn't get to read it). When my dad had surgery, I read in the waiting room to help quash the anxiety. One of my favorite photos of all times is a self-portrait of me and my husband, both curled up on the couch, reading on a cozy winter's night.

Books. How I love thee!

I guess there was never a question that I'd be a writer, was there?

I can remember when I was my girl's age, I sat on our brown couch in the middle of winter, struggling to make sense of all those letters strung together in "Twas the Night Before Christmas." I watch my girl doing the same thing in her new "I See Me!" book. She's still too young to really understand the magic of words. Even after all this time in my career, I am still awe-struck by the way words can be manipulated, formed, massaged, arranged and sculpted to convey feelings, scenes, conversations, events. Just by taking letters of the alphabet, stringing them together in such a way, people can create art. It amazes me.

Of course, at this stage of the game, my kiddo needs images in addition to words. When I first saw the "I See Me!" book, I noticed how it combined story and image perfectly. My girl's hardcover book is ""My Very Own Fairy Tale," featuring 60 pages of full-color illustrations of these gorgeous fairies and their story. But the coolest part is that it features my girl's first, middle and last name, spelled out on each page by the fairies as part of the story. So it's not one of those personalized books where the child's name is just plugged in to the first page in a template. The name is part of the story, making the books very individual and unique.

My girl's name, like mine, is unique, so seeing her react to recognizing her moniker in something I didn't write in crayon was priceless.

Who knows? If I had books like this when I was my girl's age, maybe I would have read sooner, gotten better grades, been inspired to write novels in my teens and won a Nobel Prize for literature by now. Well, we can dream.

 For more info, check out...

http://www.iseeme.com/all-personalized-childrens-books.html 

Remember When

For most of my life, I'd been in a losing, yet frantic, struggle to stop time. Always aware of the ticking of the clock, I feared how fast time screamed by. If I didn't do everything possible to live in the moment, it would evaporate before I had a chance to even see it. A favorite movie of mine is "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."  I loved his mantra: Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Problem was, I kept stopping life so I could look around. And as anyone who has ever driven a car knows, you stop too often, you get nowhere.

So for as long as I can recall, I've battled the panic over life moving at life-speed, and my desire to call a time-out so I could thoroughly enjoy every minute.

You know what happened to kick this dilemma into a Stage 5 Terror Alert?

Becoming a parent.

It began with my pregnancy. Friends, family, strangers—anyone with a voice—would tell me to enjoy my sleep now, because I'd never sleep again. Or enjoy my husband now, because we'd never talk again until this child left the house at 18. Enjoy eating now, because I'll be on a diet forever to lose the baby fat. Enjoy today, because tomorrow is going to suck, essentially.

I made it my mission to adore being pregnant (which, thankfully, was easy, since my pregnancy was ridiculously blissful. Thank you, hormones!) and to hang on to these last pre-parenthood days with gusto. We traveled. We went on dates. We slept. We slept late. We had fun. But behind all of it lurked this panic planted by all those well-meaning congratulations and nuggets of advice I didn't ask for. I feared the unknown path of parenthood, so if I stopped and looked around long enough at my pre-motherhood life, I could hang on to as much of it as possible. Exhausting, yes.

But not nearly as utterly, destructively exhausting as what came next.

I had a baby. And the comments, guised in the cloak of assistance and female sisterhood, flooded in, drowning me. Every single time I went out in public with my daughter, strangers would talk about how awesome parenting is, how their babies are now 43 years old, how much they loved these newborn days, how much they miss having babies, how I MUST enjoy every minute. "Because they grow so fast! It'll be over before you know it. Just cherish every minute!" Every bit of conversation ended with this nugget. Or should I call it a hit, because every single time I heard it, I felt bruised and fearful. I felt like a horrid mother because, honestly, I found it difficult to enjoy parenting as much as these people said I should. And that just did wonders for my mommy self-esteem.

Newborns change so much from week to week, you could literally sit down and watch them transform before your eyes. As I witnessed my daughter go from red, curled-up, wrinkled newborn to creamy-skinned, bright-eyed baby, I quivered with anxiety. Everyone is right, I screamed. I am going to go to bed tonight and when I wake, my girl will be in high school. Just like that! And I missed it! I wasn't enjoying it enough!

Missing anything—even a good deal at Target—gives me hives. Missing out on moments of motherhood, well, that gave me certifiable insanity. I promptly launched a mission to capture every second of this new life, just as I did my pregnancy. Of course, as anyone with a newborn will tell you, there are lots of moments (hell, days and weeks of them) that are downright miserable. Why stop and look around here? Because I'll regret missing this, I screeched to myself. Because it all goes so fast! I must enjoy it all!

I took thousands of pictures, hours of video, wrote in dozens of journal pages all in the hopes of capturing time. The minute I'd feel bored stupid with parenthood, frustrated the girl wouldn't sleep, in tears because nursing was less appealing than shoving a stick up my nose, guilt overtook me. Maybe mothers knew something I didn't. Maybe I just wasn't cut out for motherhood because I did not enjoy it every minute of the day.

As days turned to months turned to years, I added another baby and more anxiety. Once one became two, time really did seem to go fast. And if I thought I was busy with one, I was sadly mistaken. Two wasn't overwhelming, but close to it at times.

Yet it was this turn on my life highway, when I was at my busiest, that I realized something: All of those well-meaning advice givers were full of crap.

Yes, life goes fast. Way, way too fast. And yes, we should enjoy parenthood instead of complain and gripe about it all of the time, wishing it away. But it's impossible to love it every single day.  I had a friend of mine once tell me in my pre-baby days that parenthood is a bit like marriage. Are you mindlessly, over-the-moon in love and joyful every single day? No. Would you trash it all and be single again? No way. Same with parenthood. Every day is not a fun-filled ride on "It's a Small World." Poopy diapers get ripped off and used as feces-filled paintbrushes. Babies scream for no other reason than they can. Boobs hurt. Faces wrinkle. Tinkling becomes a family affair. Days and nights get confused. Spit up smells worse when dry. Tantrums in the middle of Trader Joe's make you want to abandon the cart with kid inside and run away.

But you don't. You don't want to trade it all in because at the end of the (very long) day, you know you'd rather be their mom than anything else. Even if today sucked ass.

Author and blogger Gretchen Rubin said “The days are long, but the years are short.” The more years I log as a mom, the more I understand this completely. There are days that will not end. I used to count my days as work days and weekends. Now, I count them as the time between naps, meals and bedtimes. Some days, it feels like I spent years in the kitchen, making snacks and lunches and breakfasts. But when I picked my head up and finally looked around, it would be 10 p.m. and I had no idea. Wasn't it just breakfast? Motherhood really messes with your internal clock.

Having my two babies left me less time to obsess about my mission to live in the minute while consciously taking stock of said minute. In reality, that's impossible. But in my head, I thought it was a must-do.

But now, I think I figured it out. It's impossible to hold on to every minute without missing the next one coming down the road. Some moments are tough. Some are bittersweet. Others are beautiful. But I don't have to feel guilt anymore because I don't blissfully enjoy every single one of them. I can accept them for what they are, tuck them away and move on. 

Parenting expert Sandy McDaniel helped me out. She said that she spends a lot of her time now remembering when her children were younger, entering school, playing around during summer vacation.

"Your 'when' is now," she wrote in a recent newsletter. "You 'chill' too, and don't miss playtime without all the school schedules. Enjoy your children."

That was it! Not "enjoy every single minute." Not "this time goes so fast, hang on with a death-grip." Not "You'll regret it if you don't feel like Snow White with birds singing songs of joy around your head every day you wake up."

Enjoy your children. Your now will someday be your remember when. So enjoy your kids.

That, I can do. Even when they're screaming, or painting with poop, or not eating well, or biting me, or crawling on top of the bookshelf, or diving into the drama queen pool, or asking me for the 36^th time to play on the computer, or running through the library and screaming like a drunk "Jersey Shore" fool. I can hate the moment, feel frustration into my bone marrow, ache longingly to have a few uninterrupted hours of work time, want to scream and run away. But throughout it all, I always enjoy my babies. Maybe not the moment or the circumstance. But my kids. I can enjoy them. That, I can do. I can look at that moment, "click" a mental picture, file it away as a "remember when" and keep going. This will work with the crazy moments as well as the ones I want to hang on to forever. 

So the next time I get that snippet of advice from someone warning me how fast time goes by and how I'll regret it if I don't relish every moment, enjoying each one, I'll say, "I am enjoying my kids. This moment, on the other hand, sucks and I don't care if it speeds by. My kids, though, yeah, I'll enjoy them and I will probably turn this into one of those 'remember when' moments in about 10 years. This moment, with the toddler frantically grabbing on to me in his attempt to climb out of the cart as if it was the icy Bering Sea, and my daughter dissolving into tears because I snapped at her for ramming her child-sized shopping cart into my ankle for the ninth time. But right this very second, I’m fine with just enjoying having kids."

Of course I won't say any of that. I'll nod, chuckle knowingly and say "Oh don't I know it. Yes, I am enjoying every single second." Because that's what I'm supposed to say. But in my head, I'll answer the way I want. I will remind myself that while I don't enjoy the moment, I do enjoy my kids. I will remember this moment, love it or not. Guilt be gone.

Bendings, Part Two

Another beginning and ending—a bending. And this one bent my heart in two. I wrote this last week, and I'm still feeling the same.

June 13….

Preschool ended today, and my heart broke. I knew this day was coming, of course. I'd known it since the day I set foot in that small, cozy, parent-participation school three years ago. But graduation seemed eons away on that first day when I dressed my toddler up in her first pair of new-school shoes and walked her through the door.

And somehow, today is that day. The end of preschool. For more than half of her life, my girl has been going to this preschool and it became part of our weekly routine. Having a preschooler, not yet a schoolgirl, meant that my girl could still be considered my baby. I feared jumping on the school train because everyone said that's when time really speeds up and the years scream past. One minute you're attending Back to School Night in kindergarten, and the next you are helping them cram for their senior finals. I'm terrified the next time I pop my head out of the sand to look around, my girl will be driving off to college and I'll be standing dumfounded in the driveway wondering how we got here.

I've been swimming in clichés like that all week. If I heard myself say, "It feels like just yesterday I was touring this school for the first time," I was going to scream. But the truth is, it's all true! It went so fast, and now here I am. At the end.

Our last day was amazing, yet so bittersweet. A field trip to the neighboring train station, cupcakes on the playground, visiting with friends, songs, a collection of artwork given to us by our teacher, a party at a friend's house after school. But throughout it all, I felt disbelief that this was really the end. The moms seemed to be walking through the day in this similar state of disbelief, while the kids couldn't wait to get to the party, have another cookie, talk about "kinnergardin" and new schools. As students said goodbye to their teacher and then ran out of the classroom in a state of summer bliss, the grown ups dabbed their eyes and tried to milk the last minutes for all they were worth. But the day was so busy, I didn't have much time to ponder the reality of all of this. Yet.

Later this afternoon, my girl pulled one of her baby brother's new toys out of the pile and said, "Can I take this for Share Day?" I started to answer, and then realized she wouldn't have another Share Day.

Because today, she graduated from preschool.

And I did what any sane mother does at the moment life slaps her in the face: I started bawling.

Basically, it means my first-born baby is growing up.

This preschool schedule, and my volunteer days spent at the school, became such a routine for us, I feel lost now that they are over. My girl is a winter baby, so she missed the kindergarten cutoff. At any rate, I would have kept her for that bonus year because of the amazing growth and development I witnessed throughout the previous two years at this school with its nurturing teaching staff. And when I find something good and something that works, I want to keep it forever. I'm learning that with kids, this is an impossibility.

My girl was going to grow up, no matter how tightly I hung on.

Like I wrote in my previous blog, parenting is nothing if not a series of beginnings and endings. I hate it. Get used to one phase or stage, and then everything changes. We wrapped preschool into our lives. The vast majority of our friends—mine and my daughter's—came from preschool. When I had my son, the preschool rallied and provided dinners for us for two weeks. TWO weeks! Basically, preschool was a large part of our family's life.

Now that it's over, I feel unbelievably lost. My girl is fine. I'm a wreck.

I remember my girl's first day at the school. I got up early and dressed her in the cutest red and blue dress with matching leggings. Curly blond pigtails stuck out from either side of her head and she carried a new green backpack with her name embroidered on the flap. Her speech skills were still rough back then, as were her potty training talents. She barely reached the top of the classroom doorknob. Leaving her for those three hours seemed foreign to me. I didn't really know what to do with myself. No one cried; it was a surprisingly easy transition. At lunch, when I picked her up, her hair flew in wild waves about her face, a potty accident necessitated a change of clothes and she had sand in her shoes. I'd never seen her so exhausted or satisfied.

From that day on, we were on the preschool bandwagon and we never looked back. I avoided thinking about the end. But today I had to. There wasn't a choice. I stayed with her all day at school today, taking photos of nearly every detail I could in an effort to capture not just the images of this school and her preschool experience, but the feel of it all. The way the morning light entered the classrooms and made them glow. The blue confetti carpet as dark as midnight. The way the guinea pigs nibbled on leftover vegetables. The smell of paint and markers. The endless puzzles and games. The large wooden blocks used to build boats, cars, trains and cities. The small wooden table and chairs. The cubbies on rollers where artwork was placed at the end of the day.

I went into each of the other two classrooms to say goodbye to the other teachers my daughter had in years prior, and memories hit me hard. The entire school leaked memories from every corner. I could see my daughter in every inch of that school. Walking in the front door with me every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Listening to stories next to the pet mouse that seemed to live as long as some cats I know. Sitting at the table rolling homemade clay around or reading a dinosaur book on the big pillow in the corner. Talking to the classroom fish. Playing with the trucks instead of the dolls. Running to the playground. Finally mastering the monkey bars.

It all became too much. This school, and these women whom I entrusted my daughter to every school day, became a part of our lives. They helped shape this amazing, beautiful young girl I am still amazed is mine. I look back at how absolutely tiny and young she was on her first day at school, and it seems incomprehensible to me that today, she is this joking, laughing, foot-taller child. She is no longer my baby. She's now officially an elementary schooler. Will she look back on her preschool years the way I do, with loving fondness? I pull out the dusty memories of my time with Mrs. Zimmerman as some amazing memories. Will my girl? How I hope! 

Enrolling her in kindergarten didn't start this emotional tsunami. Nor did waking up this morning and knowing it would be her last day. It was leaving for the last time. Hearing the gate close, watching the teachers leave. I knew I'd see them again and have the chance, God willing, to have them help shape and influence my son. But it would be different. Not better, not worse. Just different.

For this is my first baby, my first experience with this heartbreaking, torturous beauty known as parenting. I am blessed that my daughter is healthy and able to grow normally and attend school as she should. Of course I am so grateful. Yet I can't deny that a large part of my heart wants to literally hold her in my arms so tightly she can't get any bigger, can't leave my sight, can't start talking like those smartasses on nightly sitcoms. I want to wrap her up and preserve this moment exactly like it is. I want to freeze (damn cliché again!) time right now, with my girl running through the preschool playground laughing carelessly and in a way only the innocent can.

I fear her growing up. My best friend says that every stage has amazing things to cherish. I have to take her word on that. Because now, I'm stuck in the preschool stage. I have my foot jammed in the door and my hands white-knuckling the doorjamb as forces try to pull me out. I don't want to go. A near panic descends upon me as I think about how fast the past three years have gone by, and how fast the next 13 will too. I am frightened about the unknowns of elementary school (will she get a good teacher? Will she make new friends? Will I? Will we all fit in? Did we make the right choice of schools? Will she continue to love school?)  and I mourn the end of her preschool days.

Is that too harsh a word? Mourn? Perhaps. But right now, it feels like a loss. I feel homesick and a bit grief-stricken. I miss the preschool routine, the joy of watching these kids grow and play and say silly things and do even sillier ones. I have no doubt why these three women continue to teach year after year. The chance to have such a strong role in a child's life and to be present at the stage of the preschool theater is an opportunity to treasure.

Yes, it's over and I need to figure out how to deal with it. It does my girl no good to watch me dissolve in tears every time I see a piece of her artwork or read a note from her teacher. Yet I don't know how. Maybe I just need to sit with the sadness for a bit, let it wash over me and then recede like the tide. Maybe this is a clue to parenting: learning how to hold your breath while the bittersweet moments threaten to wash you under.

Basically, the sadness comes not so much from us leaving one school and entering another. It's what that transition means. It means my baby girl is growing up. And as much as I may ache to stop it at times, I can't. Nor do I really want to. I know it's a necessary part of life. And I do look forward with anticipation to see how this beautiful little creature becomes an amazing woman. Each day she unfolds another petal and shows us another side of her blossoming personality.

But for now, I am going to sit with this sadness, this loss, for a bit longer as I try to find my way. I know I still have the memories, the friends, the pictures and videos of our time at preschool. (And the giant tote of artwork.) Yet I need to digest that it's now in our past.  Our past makes up who we are in the present. So this amazing little preschool tucked away inside of a church, the women who nurtured and loved my baby each week, and the friends my sweet girl made will always be a part of us, now and in the future. But oh, how I will miss it being in our present!

Bendings, Part One

I distinctly remember a moment in my girl's infancy. She was perhaps three months old, not old enough yet to do much more than poop, eat and make funny faces. It seemed like those three months lasted three years. I sat in a playgroup watching other moms with their babies, and a few of those babies were sitting and—gasp!—crawling. I believed with every fiber of my being that there was no way my girl would ever crawl. We would be stuck in this quasi-newborn stage forever. I just could not imagine her getting older, growing up, crawling, talking, walking. I couldn't see past where we were right then.

That was before I learned that everything in parenting is either a beginning or an ending. Right when you got used to some action or phase or stage, it ended. And another one began.

I'm hitting two new endings/beginnings—shall we rename them bendings?—this month. My boy finally left his adorable bulldog-like crawling style on the curb and decided that walking is a better way to go. And my girl, the one I couldn't picture doing anything but sitting propped up on my lap in her OshKosh overalls, graduated from preschool.

Let's tackle the boy's bending first.

I know some parents wait anxiously for their babies to walk. It is taxing to constantly carry ever-so-heavy kiddos around, and it gets REALLY old scrubbing floor dirt out of every hand crease and toenail nightly. But aside from getting that first tooth (which never fails to drive me to tears), walking is one of the hardest milestones for me to absorb. I am so thankful both of my kids walked late (after 14 months for both) because by that time, the exhaustion of the daily dirt termination outweighed my desire to hold on to the last vestiges of babyhood.

And that, in essence, is what ended the minute my boy got up, toddled to me, fell, then took off in the 10 feet between his grandmother and great aunt. Babyhood. My boy, who always looked older than his calendar age due to his large size, was undeniably growing up. Sure, he may have been wearing size 24-month onesies at a year, but he was still that tiny little creature I met one rainy February night and instantly felt like we'd known each other for a lifetime. But now, here he is, standing tall and walking stiff-legged like a drunk Frankenstein. Looking all the world like a toddler. A boy. Not a baby. That stage ended.

And the stage of walking, running, playing, shoes, jumping and skipping has begun.

A bending.

Every time this circles around, I remind myself that each stage has something to look forward to. The gummy smile looked heartbreakingly endearing, but teeth meant introducing new foods and enhancing nutrition. Crawling meant a lack of freedom for me (what do you mean you're not in the same place I put you when I left the room to pee?), but more freedom for the baby. And walking. This meant the end of the infant phase, and the beginning of so many more freedoms and fun times for both of us. Yet I admit, seeing my boy upright, toddling around, makes me fear the fast passage of the years.

But I try to keep the beginning in mind. The beginning of my boy the boy, not just the baby.

Stay tuned for the next chapter: preschool graduation (yes, I'm still crying about it). 

The Cord

I remember my first Mother's Day. I don't remember what we did as a young family with a five-month-old baby, but I remember how I felt: Dumbfounded panic. For my entire life, Mother's Day was something we celebrated for someone else. My sister and I would give my mom handmade goodies, which slowly matured into store-bought ones, which slowly matured into adult excursions to the day spa or brunches at the local teahouse.

Now, it was my turn to have someone celebrate me. The idea felt beyond strange. How could I be celebrated for a job I was totally screwing up? It had taken me months to wrap my head around the fact that I indeed was a mom, and even five months after birth, I still needed processing time. The idea that I had a whole life in my hands terrified me. It seemed all too easy to mess it up. As a mom of "advanced maternal age" (the author of that phrase can suck it, by the way), I figured I'd be so chock-full of wisdom, doubts about my maternal skills would not cross my mind. How wrong I was. In fact, I think doubt about my ability to parent was more acute, louder even, just because of my age. I had more time to see mistakes others made, watch the success of others and compare myself to it all.

And as any mother can tell you, unfair comparison is the death of sanity.

Too often, women put forth the faces they want everyone else to see. What may have been a private hell on Earth for some mother becomes glossed over in the retelling. Think about people who claim their children slept through the night for 16 hours from birth, or the ones who swear that labor feels good, or that breastfeeding is easy, or that their toddlers love broccoli. Our gut knows this is just not the truth. It's impossible! But our minds start feeding us slivers of doubt. "If her kids sleep so well, I must be doing something wrong….if nursing is that easy, what mistakes am I making?" The internal dialog is endless, but with one common theme: We're screwing it up.

I thought I'd mastered the art of not comparing my insides to others' outsides. I was, until I gave birth. Then everything I seemed to have accomplished in my thirties got stashed in my Diaper Genie along with the poopy diapers. The holes left there by my former knowledge quickly filled in, like wet sand at the shoreline. Instead of confidence, doubt and self-loathing took their places. A friend of mine assured me it takes a lot of work to screw up a kid; it's not something an hour of television a day or the occasional missed nap is going to do. No mom is perfect, she assured me.

But all moms do one thing perfectly: We all face this doubt and this overwhelming sense of being responsible. Perfectly.

This all made me look at my mom in a totally different way. "Textbook" is not how you might describe our history. In fact, my mom is fond of saying "God put parents here to teach our children what mistakes not to make." It angered me, that saying. Because it made it sound like every parenting step my mother made was a grand mistake, everything I'm destined to do will be a huge lesson in what not to do for my kids. Is that right?

No.

All grown up now, I can look back and see things my mom did right. I can see things she does right as a parent now. I can also look back and know she felt the exact same doubts I felt as a new mom. And she overcame them. Or at least pushed them aside so she could parent my sister and I.

Yes, there are definitely many aspects of my childhood I won't repeat. Yet there are some I definitely will.

Such as being my kid's cheerleader. Let's be honest: I could not master anything athletic. Or even physical. Too uncoordinated for dance, too scrawny for softball, too short for basketball, too just awful for tennis. I tried. And Mom schlepped me from one practice to another, until I called it quits. She never offered much of an opinion one way or the other. She let me figure out what I was doing. But what she did do was help me see what I could do very well. And that was write. She knew my sister received accolades by the bucket for her athletic prowess, while I got the "Thanks for Participating" ribbons. But what I could do was spin tales about eggs entering another world through a magical door in the refrigerator's produce drawer, or make the contents of a kitchen pantry sound nearly literary. I spent weeks one summer writing a book about my stuffed teddy bear Sunny, and even longer than that polishing the details in my detective series.

And Mom held those accomplishments up to the light for me to see. I may strike out at bat, but I could make people laugh with my comic renditions of a Mars Bar living in the fridge. I learned to see that all of us have some unique talent, and it's up to us to blow it off or feed it so it flourishes.

So this Mother's Day, years since my first one, I have gotten better with the mom doubt. I've learned that motherhood isn't about being perfect, nor is it as fragile as a blown-glass ornament hanging on the Christmas tree. And I understand what my mom says, too. We are here to teach our kids, bad and good. There are things in my life I hope my kids never need to deal with. I hope they learn from my missteps and mistakes. Don't we all want better lives for our kids than the ones we're living now?

But I don't think we as moms serve only as examples of what to avoid, of things not to do. Even in the most difficult relationships, there are rays of good that children learn from as well. My mom taught me that we all have something special. That is something I will reinforce with my own children. Mom taught me other things, too, which I will pass down in one form or another.

And the biggest one is this: No matter what, love survives. Nothing we do is stronger than the bond between a mother and a child. In all the craziness that this world can flood us with, that bond serves as a solid foundation, never wavering and always visible, even in the worst of storms. Even withstanding maternal mistakes. This mother/child bond can give you strength to accomplish amazing things that would have been impossible had you only leaned upon yourself. It makes both mothers and children stronger, better, bigger. The umbilical cord is cut at birth, but it never goes away. Mothers and children are forever tethered together, not by any physical link, but by love. Love is our umbilical cord, and it sustains us, forces us go on when we can't take another step, allows us to do impossible feats. It gives us life, just like the original cord did in the womb.

So Mom, on this Mother's Day, since you didn't want me to buy you anything, I am giving you a gift that I didn't purchase. I'm doing what you encouraged in me from the start: I am writing. Words are what I can do, and what have saved me time and time again. That's a gift you helped me see. So even though, all these years and years and years after your first Mother's Day, you still feel the doubt of your own parenting skills, know that you gave me some good armor and good tools to carve a place for myself in this world. Best of all, you gave me love, and that gives me more strength than you know. Happy Mother's Day.