Just Breathe

“One thing about having a baby is that each step of the way you simply cannot imagine loving him any more than you already do, because you are bursting with love, loving as much as you are humanly capable of -- and then you do, you love him even more.”
― Anne Lamott

I did not expect to feel so emotional -- maybe even strangely heartbroken -- on my daughter's last day of kindergarten.

Her first day of kindergarten, sure. I spent all of last summer in a perpetual state of wanting to toss my cookies over the thought of sending my baby girl to kindergarten; I full expected to feel like a wreck that day. (Was it already a year ago that Matt and I left our daughter in a classroom with her new pink backpack and all her school supplies? Or, to be more accurate, were gently shooed away by her teacher after we'd taken pictures and grinned so hard our faces hurt, trying to be brave for our daughter? And staggered across the playground afterwards, slumped against each other, towards our car, towards the absurd real world that required us to go to work after that? It seems like that just happened. And yet so much has happened since then.) But we truly could have not asked for or been granted a more wonderful first year of school for our daughter. On the very first day -- before that, even, on the day of orientation, when we met her teacher -- I knew she would be okay. I knew she'd love it, I knew she'd be loved. I knew she'd just absolutely rock kindergarten.

So it has been great. I'm just blown away by the growth I've seen in my little girl this year, and I love her teacher and student teacher, and it's possible I may have been just a touch too effusive when wrote each of them a card a few days ago telling them just how grateful I am for everything they've done and for being so wonderful and nurturing and putting me instantly at ease way back in September. (Still, I'm also a teacher, and that kind of feedback means a lot to me, so.) It's possible that a part of me believed my daughter could just be in kindergarten indefinitely, with these wonderful teachers and this great little class and I wouldn't ever have to worry about her schooling ever again. I've been looking forward to the end of the school year for myself rather desperately, but I really didn't think much about the inevitable end for my daughter as well, and so this week that reality kind of punched me in the gut.

Both Suzannah and I had a short day on our last day of school; mine ended an hour before hers, so as soon as my day ended (at ten in the morning) I raced home to grab the camera before I walked to school.

I took pictures on the way, by myself. This is the path through the trees we've walked so many times this year. This is what it looks like on my girl's last day of kindergarten, the sun filtering through the leaves, shadows dancing on the ground. This is the huge, moss-covered tree she likes to touch. This is the little clearing where she picks tiny white flowers for me. I wanted to capture, somehow, the moment -- the afternoon, the sunshine. The moment that contained so many other moments.

I waited outside her classroom, squinting in the sunshine. When the bell finally rang, I actually felt tears pricking at my eyelids. I forced them back; they would have confused my daughter. They surprised me, a bit. Instead, I put on my brightest smile, I hugged my girl, and I took pictures of her with her teachers. We exchanged knowing glances. We made it!

(The end of the school year is always so bittersweet. Some years more bitter than sweet. I had a hard time saying good-bye to my seniors this year -- I really, truly loved that class. With any luck, though, I'll have my favorite juniors again next year. I'm so ready to let go of the rest, to get some distance, to recharge, to breathe.)

Ultimately, it's a good way to feel at the end of a year. It's good to feel the ache. It means it mattered. And it did.

***

In less important news, we are nearing the end of a kitchen remodel. We've both saved for and put off this project; it's never felt like something I needed, really, because increasingly I feel that it's far too easy to "need" things just because someone else tells us we need them. (This is why I love that my children don't watch real TV yet; I can still control, to some tiny little extent, the amount of children's marketing they encounter.) But also, it was time. Our kitchen was fine when we bought our house as eager young newlyweds moving into our first real home; nearly ten years later, I'm so ready to get rid of the awful wood veneer cabinets, the scratched-to-hell porcelain sink, the floor that's peeling up around the edges. Originally, we talked about the floor. Then about the counters. Finally, we just went ahead and decided to do the whole thing, because, as Matt said, we don't want to look back in a few years and wish we had.

It's going really well. I listened to far too many horror stories about kitchen remodels before we actually started. It would cost three times as much as we budgeted for! It would take at least twice as long as we expected, and probably more! They would trash our house! There would be dust absolutely everywhere, and we would spend the next month cleaning in the aftermath!

Fortunately, none of that has proved to be true. While we're tearing out pretty much everything, we're not reconfiguring our kitchen, we're not knocking out any walls, we're not messing with the plumbing or electricity -- it's pretty straightforward. Our contractor is a neighbor of my brother's, and we've enjoyed working with him. They tore out the old cabinets on Monday. New cabinets were installed on Tuesday and Wednesday, along with an over-the-range microwave that is going to pretty much double our counter space. Our new countertops went in today. The new floor will be installed on Monday. One week! Start to finish! And they haven't trashed our house! I'm so pleased with it; I know everyone always talks about how the kitchen is the most important thing in terms of resale and all, but we have no plans to move out of our cozy little home anytime soon and I really just want to love the kitchen in the house where we live. It's in the very center of our home, and I spend an awful lot of time in it, so this matters to me. And I'm so grateful we're able to do this now.

Also, I am really, really tired of eating out. That got old fast. It's funny; I kind of love eating out in general. I do. We do it about once a week, generally on Saturday nights, and I totally look forward to it, it's this totally self-indulgent thing for me or something, but we've been eating out (mostly out, with a few takeout meals eaten here) since Monday, and I'm sick of it. If this project had taken any longer, I'd plan more and use our slow cooker or the microwave, but I also hate the idea of washing food-crusted dishes in our bathroom. I can't wait to cook a real meal again. But I also get that this isn't a real problem.

***

So summer has begun, officially, even though today was cold and rainy. Both of my kiddos are a little under the weather, Isaac especially, with nasty coughs. Especially at night. Two days ago I was up with my son from two o'clock to four o'clock in the morning; he'd settle into bed only to wail for me five minutes later, and all he really wanted was to be held. So I rolled out of bed, again and again, wishing fiercely for the days when he still shared our bed and this was easier yet still, somehow, through my fatigue, cherishing the moment -- lifting him, feeling his arms around my neck, his breath on my cheek, rocking him, soothing him back into a fitful sleep. Late this afternoon he seemed so worn out, so content to lie on the couch with his blankies and his Raggedy Andy and one of the videos Suzannah chose at the library this afternoon; then, after pizza (delivery night, since Matt stayed out late with some of his coworkers) he revived, building an elaborate train track and a tent out of an old sheet with his sister. Both of them went to bed too late. But tomorrow is Saturday, and I do not have to grade any papers this weekend, and even if it is cold and rainy and my living room is full of my kitchen and my dining room table is covered with paper plates and our dish rack and coffee maker and a hundred other things, and even if we've had too much pizza this week, and the kids have runny noses and coughs, I can breathe.

I can really breathe.

The Weekend of Everything

(Written Wednesday night)

When the kids and I came home this afternoon, we found a note in the door -- an acknowledgement of Isaac's baptism, which was exactly two year ago today, and a reminder to light his candle.

The day of his baptism was chosen largely for convenience, a day when all our family members could be here. Truth be told, I would have rather had it on the night of Easter Vigil, my favorite church service of the entire year; maybe part of me was worried that having it so close to Suzannah's birthday would make it an afterthought, too easily forgotten, lost in the bustle of the long weekend, of the birthday celebrations, of the ordinary chaos that comes at the end of a school year.

After all, though, it wasn't forgotten nor an afterthought; I remember it today, remembered it tonight when I rocked my young, sturdy son in my arms before tucking him in bed, feeling grateful that he was born into our family and has the love and support of our church family as well. My heart filled and overflowed two years ago, and that day felt huge and important to me even while I realized it was all so much bigger than me. Tonight I'm feeling a little quiet but no less full. Perhaps even more.

We're back to some sort of normal here, at least for a few days until Suzannah's birthday party with her friends. My little girl turned six years old on Monday. Six. And she is so aware of being six years old, so proud. It is almost more than I can take.

We really had a fabulous weekend. Suzannah has been lucky enough to have at least one set of grandparents here for her birthday every year; this year it was my parents, as my in-laws are in Europe. We kicked off the birthday festivities with a Girls' Day Out -- a trip to the American Girl store with my mom, my sister-in-law, and my aunt. This was Suzannah's "big" birthday gift.

And okay, I am going to be completely honest here and admit that I have been -- and still am -- hugely ambivalent about American Girl and all the marketing, about the fact that it's such a brand name now. I really can't put into words how much I loathe marketing to children. But there are times when I have to weigh my ambivalence against my daughter's unfettered joy and just let her have this experience, free of my own baggage and opinions.

Suzannah really had no pre-conceived notions of American Girl; she's never even seen a catalogue, and unless she's seen a friend with a doll or something I'm pretty sure she had no earthly idea what American Girl even is. I suppose it helped me to remember that when I saw my little girl's eyes light on "her" doll at the store, the one who looks like her. In that moment, all I wanted was to give my little girl her first very special doll. She chose her little slip of paper with such serious deliberation -- you take the paper that corresponds to the doll you want and carry it to the front counter -- and after that little paper was in her hands, she just couldn't wait. I thought we might look at some outfits first, for instance, or some books, but she just wanted her new friend in her arms. And of course I understood. Of course I did.

There were other little girls getting their first dolls as well, and I saw the same look in their eyes, that same reverent awe. More than once I exchanged these sudden knowing looks with their mothers; their faces were mirrors reflecting my own love, maybe nostalgia, maybe even a strange bittersweet joy in my girl growing out of childhood but also more deeply into her girlhood -- one in which she is celebrated for being who she is, I hope, and not one in which she feels she has to fit some sort of mold for what is beautiful, what is feminine. And for all the pink in the American Girl store, and for all the products, for all the ways there are to spend lots and lots of money, I still felt that we'd entered a space that existed solely for a wonderful kind of wish fulfillment. I mean, I can tell you right now that I would have loved an experience like that when I was my daughter's age. I would have loved to have lunch in a little bistro where my doll was given a chair right next to mine, and her own little cup and plate. I would have loved to have my doll be treated as my friend, would have loved having my imagination be so honored. I've never been to a store like this, but I did appreciate that the adults spoke directly to my daughter, like she mattered (because of course she does), and not just to me.

In the end, I was simply grateful. It doesn't make me a good mother to be able to give this to my daughter; it simply means I'm a lucky mother. A lucky woman, really. A lucky daughter, sister-in-law, niece. I can't speak for the other women in my family, but I had such a beautiful day with all of them; mostly it was about celebrating this little girl I love so much, but it was also about all of us spending time together and my fervent hope that my daughter always has women in her life who will nurture the beautiful, fierce, gentle, funny, imaginative person she is.

The rest of the weekend was lovely as well -- brunch on Sunday, hiking at Mt. Si with my parents, visiting the glass museum with the kids for the first time, grilling burgers and hot dogs and eating cake and opening gifts at our house on Monday evening. There were a few thwarted naps (Isaac's, mine), and laundry that didn't get folded, and papers that didn't get graded, but those things are just background noise.

And now we're back to business as usual, although we're also baking brownies for Suzannah's special birthday treat to share with her kindergarten class, and we're also getting ready for her birthday party with her friends.

(She wants a Star Wars cake. Confession: I am not all that into Star Wars but I cannot tell you how much I love that my girl wants a Star Wars cake. She's so matter-of-fact about this, so sure.)

So we're juggling all of these things, these fabulous growing-up things, and somewhere in there we managed to score a date night to celebrate the fact that in addition to everything else -- our daughter's birthday, Isaac's baptismal birthday, the business of the long weekend -- this weekend marks the ten-year anniversary of the day I told Matt yes, I would marry him, and the twelve-year anniversary of the day he first kissed me across the ocean in St. Malo. Memorial Weekend is about a lot of things, really, and it occurs to me tonight that for me it's going to kind of always be about everything for our family. In a way, it's where we all started. It's where we come from. It's where our family was born, in so many ways.

Tonight, I'm feeling a little strangely melancholy, feeling the weight of all of this -- the way my heart feels both heavy and light. It's the inevitable passing of time, I guess. The awareness of it, the bittersweetness.

Tonight I am remembering every age my daughter has ever been, thinking about the way she entered our lives so furiously, so fast, keeping us delightfully surprised for six years and counting; I am tip-toeing into her room after she has fallen asleep to smooth her hair off her face and kiss her forehead, her cheeks, just like I kissed them the day she was born and every day since: I remember.

Tonight I am holding my son in the dark, his arms wrapped tightly around my neck, his cheek against my cheek, against my shoulder, his sweet toothpastey breath reminding me of his sweet newborn smell even though it's an entirely different smell now, toothpaste and sweat and toddlerhood, but it's that intimacy, that familiarity of a mother's body still belonging somehow to her child's even after the child no longer depends on her for nourishment, even after he has left her bed at night. And I'm thinking of the day two years ago when I held the weight of my child in my arms and thought, God, he's yours, and I don't know how to let you have him, so I am going to need a little help: I remember.

Tonight I am so painfully conscious of the ways in which it is possible to lose each other, and of the ways in which I offer up my own children to a world, to a God, that is so much bigger and greater than me, and the ways in which I feel I am not quite up to the task of trusting the universe with them but also I take comfort in the fact that this task of loving and raising them and ultimately letting go of them -- how? -- is not all up to me alone. I think about the ways in which my heart has never been so vulnerable and raw, and I think that six years into this parenting thing I probably haven't even scratched the surface of the joy and pain it can hold. And all I can really do, I suppose, is try to hold each moment, remember it, and let go -- to unclench my fists and fall a little, and open myself to whatever comes next.