In one week and one day, the big yellow school bus will resume its route, stopping at the street corner right in front of my house. My two oldest children will get on the bus, headed to their first days of second and fourth grade. I will hold the hand of my youngest, who will start preschool a week later.
I can clearly remember all the emotion that went into the first day of school as a kid. I remember the excitement, the anticipation, the nerves, the unknowns. I’ve never been one to breeze through life and all its experiences. I think about it all, and I feel it all.
Which is why it probably shouldn’t surprise me that as I watch their brave and uncertain little selves get on that bus, I know I will feel it strongly. I feel it even now, sitting at my desk, just thinking about it.
The thing is, I know their hearts. I know they are both excited, anticipating new friends and new adventures. I know that my son is anxious that he has forgotten everything he has ever learned; that he overheard the term “summer slump” when he was seven and has never forgotten it. I know that my daughter is afraid she will talk too loud or forget to stay seated and get in trouble. I know they both hope they have friends in their class, have teachers that don’t yell, and have enough time to eat their lunches.
And I know that they are walking into those classrooms and lunchrooms and social spaces without me. It’s good and right and healthy, and it breaks my heart a little. I want to go with them, to make sure that their classmates are kind, to help their teachers see how precious and smart and funny they really are. I want to make sure that they are respectful to their teachers, that they are kind to their classmates, that they see others and care for them well.
It always surprises me how much of mothering involves letting go. How I am constantly releasing my children in new ways, letting them go further and more independently, encouraging them to fly and allowing them to fall. How much trust it requires and how it demands releasing them into a world that I know is not always safe or kind.
I’m not sure that I’m very good at that part. I know that I’m good at the snuggling, at the bedtime stories. I am good at holding tight. I’m not so good at letting go.
But then again, I’m doing it. I will put them on the bus, I will do my best to teach them to fly and to be a safe place to land when they fall. Maybe the sadness and the fear and the excitement don’t mean I’m doing it wrong, any more than I was doing it wrong when I stepped scared on that bus myself on the first day of school.
I am committed to trying to figure out when to hold tight and when to let go. When to wisely encourage independence and when to create shelter. How to grieve the seasons that is passing and to celebrate the one that is here. I am committed to being their safe place, their biggest cheerleader, someone who sees them and loves them. I don’t do it perfectly and I never will, but I will never stop praying and seeking wisdom and doing my very best to figure it out.
Parenting is the vehicle through which I am learning about holding tight and letting go, but now that I see it, I see it everywhere. I see it in our relationships with our families and friends, with our bodies and health, with hopes and dreams. Life constantly asks us to figure out how to hold things tightly, close to our hearts, and how to release them carefully and lovingly. It’s a tension we all need to learn to walk in.
In one week and one day, the big yellow school bus will resume it’s route, stopping at the street corner right in front of my house. I will squeeze my kids tight, kiss cheeks, and smooth hair. I will tell them I love them and believe in them. I will release them to this new season, to new adventures, to new independence. I will release them and I will hold them, all at the same time, in a tension that takes my breath a way and widens my heart.