I’m not sure if this happens to the rest of you, but sometimes when I am faced with extreme terror or panic, my mind starts to go to strange places. I can’t be quite certain that I was in a state of panic this morning (my emotions were too sporadic to tell,) but I’m guessing I was by the strange tricks my mind was playing on me.
Today was Magoo’s meet the teacher day at preschool. I really didn’t think I would be too emotional. After all, I got to go with her, and we were only there an hour. It was just a day to get acquainted.
I was calm last night, but then when it was time to get ready this morning, my mind started to spin. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but it was very similar to the moments when I was waiting to deliver Magoo. I had a million things on my mind, and I was excited for her, but I was also terrified of what was to come.
Somehow, I managed to get us all into the car, and we headed to my sister’s house because she was going to watch the Goose while Magoo and I were at school. And that’s when the time warp began. I started to think about how this was the same road I drove on 4 years and 11 months ago to tell my parents that I was pregnant with Magoo. And now I was driving on that road to take her to her future.
And then I started to realize that today would one day be a sentimental memory. Living in it, it’s bittersweet as I am excited for her to embark on all of these new experiences, but I’m realizing that she is not so slowly growing up. But then I started thinking about how this was our first trip to this particular school which led me to flash forward to what will one day be my last trip to drop off her at the school as she will be reading herself to move from grade school to high school.
At this point I looked into the backseat and I saw her singing at the top of her lungs to the nursery rhymes cd she had requested. Her voice was so sweet singing along to Hickory Dickory Dock and Baa Baa Black Sheep. And I started thinking forward even longer to thirteen years from now when TJ and I will be driving her out of town to college and how I will think back to this moment, the very beginning of her schooling and how much things will have changed.
And that’s pretty much how my mind went today — flashing forward to future events and flashing backward to different moments I have gotten to experience with her over the last four years.
I couldn’t figure out quite why I was so emotional. I was happy for her — very happy. I think we have chosen the absolute best place for her to be. It’s a very special place where we all feel comfortable and we believe she will get a solid education and be treated with respect and care. She’s going to blossom. And I wasn’t all that sad. Obviously, there were the feelings that time was moving too fast and that one day she will no longer be my baby, but I kept pushing back any feelings of sadness for her first day next week when I have to drop her off and leave — gulp.
So what was it that I was feeling? It started to make a bit of sense when we got into the preschool building. She has a very decent sized class, and both the teacher and the aid made a very concerted effort to talk to each of the kids privately. But I realized that she was one of the kids in the crowd. I wanted to go up to the teacher and tell her that Magoo is my world (along with her father and sister) and that she has a really special gift here in my daughter. I wanted to tell her that I was trusting her with my heart, the absolute best parts of me. I wanted her to see in Magoo everything that her father and I see. But I obviously kept my mouth shut. It was just weird because she has spent her entire life surrounded by people who think she is the entire world, and now she will be making her first venture out of that safe haven.
And then we were driving home, and these emotions finally made sense to me when the last verse of “Highway 20 Ride” by Zac Brown Band came on the radio.
“It was the pleasure of my life
And I cherished every time
And my whole world
It begins and ends with you”
And typing those words out, I am sitting here crying just like I was sobbing on the way home when I heard them. Despite the panic and the excitement and the sadness, the overwhelming feeling I had today was one of total unadulterated pride in my little girl. She and her sister are the absolute best parts of their father and myself. I look at them, and I realize that no matter how many mistakes I have made and how many faults I see in myself, I have done well in the area that matters the most. And I know I have done well because I look at them, and I see the most amazing little people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
It’s tough sharing them with the world, but it’s the best part of me I am sending out into the world. And if there is anything in this world I am proud to share it is that little girl and her baby sister.
