About six years ago, probably almost to the day, I was having the hardest time getting Magoo to nap. I wasn’t okay with letting her cry, but I couldn’t think of anything else that would work. I spent years (okay it was probably only days, but it felt like years) rocking her all day, just to lay her down and have her wake up. TJ would come home from work, and I would sometimes be shaking after spending the entire day trying to get one decent nap. At one point, I was so frustrated that I came down the stairs and threw the monitor half way across the room. (I made sure it landed on the couch because those things are expensive.) I was so frustrated.
And then one day she napped. And we never looked back. She has been a champion sleeper ever since.
She starts first grade next week, and we have been practicing not napping now all summer. Some days she would nap, and others she wouldn’t.
We were talking over lunch today, and she said, “Too bad I still have to nap when I get home from school during the school year.” And then I told her that no, she didn’t need to nap because school gets out much too late. She cheered even though I know about halfway through next week, she’ll be in tears because of exhaustion.
And then it hit me. This was the closing of a circle. What started in her nursery in our old house all those summers ago is coming to a close next week. A part of our experience together has come to a close.
And then I almost cried. Because I’m a weird mommy. Because that one little milestone just reminded me of all of the other little milestones. And it reminded me that starting next week, I will be losing a little more of her. She won’t be here for lunch every day. For the first time, she will be spending more awake hours somewhere else than she will at home.
And I’m reminded that mothering can sometimes be so sad. We spend the first weeks of their lives getting used to having someone be so thoroughly dependent upon us, and then we spend the next twenty years mourning each step they take away from us.