three steps

Today, I dropped my first born off at Kindergarten.  On the way there he said, “Mom, I don’t really need you to go in with me.”  After the chest pains subsided, I said, “well I have to talk to your teacher, how about I walk in behind you,” My eyes in the rearview mirror watching him contemplate this and then finally, “I guess that would be ok, but I don’t need you to come in.”  As I sat there trying to keep my composure I heard the words my dad told my mom at one point when my brother and I were not cooperating with her “life plans” for us…”That’s what happens when you raise independent children.”

So down the hallway of the elementary school that I had started Kindergarten in 23 years ago, I followed three steps behind as my baby walked a walk that I doubt I’ll ever forget his head held high with a confident stride.  I could not have been more proud but a part of me wanted to cry.  When we got to his class he did allow me a quick hug and kiss and then that was it, he was a Kindergartner.  Even though I know my work as a mother is so far from over, I somehow felt like I was giving my baby to the world for the first time.  New ideas and ways of thinking will push him to grow and challenge me as a parent.  It will be a great journey together. 

As I drove to work I thought about everything, every milestone, every tear spilt (by him and by me), I thought about the time I hid in the bathroom because he was driving me crazy, about the moments I’ll never forget as a mother…the first time his cry split through the air, the smell of his hair when he was a baby, the first time he walked, the time he told me he was a robot and he couldn’t shut off the naughty button because it was on his back and he could not reach it, the first time he rode his bike without training wheels, the look on his face when he saw his baby brother for the first time.  I thought of him at 2 years old on cross country skis and at 5 years old on water-skis. I thought of him at 3 months old sleeping on his daddy’s chest and I thought of him at 1 year old holding his daddy’s hand as they walked down the driveway at our new property (that is now our home).  I thought of him then walking down the hallway toward Kindergarten and then I saw all that was to come. 

He's my first born; he’s been with me since the start.  He’s seen the worst of my mistakes and the greatest of my triumphs as a mother.  He will survive and thrive because of me and in spite of me.  And like all things with the first born, we will figure it out together (sometimes holding hands and sometimes with him three steps ahead blazing the trail).