Five Years Old

I feel like I have been waiting for my kids to go to school from the moment I popped those suckers out at the hospital, and yet here I am... A new mom of a Kindergartener.  Oh Lordy!  The Feels people!! The feels!

Sunday night as I was lying in bed with my husband and the house was finally quiet and the hush and anticipation of the first day of school started to drift into light snoring, I finally broke into sobs.

Now, for anyone who knows me, you know that crying is a daily occurrence.  In fact, if I can't scratch  "Nervous break down" off my to-do list of the day, I just haven't be active.  But this was different.  I opened my mouth and out spilled all the "what if's" that could possibly happen to my little girl on her first day of school and I panicked.

What if the bus doesn't pick her up on time?
What if she can't get to her class?
What if the kids make fun of the way she talks?
What if she's too afraid to ask to go to the bathroom?
What if the teacher doesn't like her?
What if she doesn't like her teacher?
What if the kids gang up on her? Or exclude her? Or tease her?
What if she can't find her classroom?
What if she can't find her bus?
What if she gets on the wrong bus?
What if she gets on the right bus but at the wrong stop?
What if the bus driver makes her get off at some random stop in the middle of the ghetto all by herself because he has a schedule to keep and she's holding him up and he throws her off the bus?  How in the world am I supposed to find HER!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

...

I literally woke up in a cold sweat two nights before school started with this exact list playing through  my dream until the horror bolted me upright in my bed.....

As I was sobbing to my husband that Sunday night before school he reached over and squeezed my shoulder, giving me the most encouraging word a mother could ask for:

Hubby: Are you crying because you are worried for your little girl to go to school?
Me nodding like a five year old.  Tears streaming down my face.
Hubby:  Oh, Pumpkin!  I didn't know you had it in you!  Oh!  You really do care for our kids, don't you?

...

Ah yes, the consoling words of my wise husband are matched by none.

In all fairness, he did have a point.  I mean... I'm not exactly the over concerned parent.  I would even venture to say that to most, I would probably be borderline aloof when it comes to my kiddos.  Mostly because, I work very hard to not get anxious over the safety of my children.  I, daily, have to put my trust in something greater.  I alone can never protect these kids enough.  I have to trust my surroundings, I have to trust my child's judgment, I have to trust that the majority of people are just as concerned for my children as I am and mostly, I have to stop the cycle of anxious thinking in it's tracks before it can sow seeds of doubt and fear into my parenting.

Because once that happens... Whew!  I'll be second guessing everything I do and you know...

With that being said, I realized that the reason I was so distraught was because for the first time, the very first time, my child was going to have an entire day of decision making all on her own.  I won't be there to guide her at any step of the way.  She will go from 7:30am-2:40pm (at least that's when the bus is supposed to drop her off... that's a blog for another time) with out a single solitary word of advice, correction or encouragement.

I realized...

I can't protect her anymore.  At 5 years old she has to learn to be in control of herself.  Five seems so young.  But I remember being five.  I wasn't five in my head.  I was me, in my head.  Always the same voice and I thought I was big at five years old.

So, when I saw her smiling face beaming at me from the bus window as I came to pick her up at the bus stop I realized something...

She wasn't the newborn I brought home from the hospital in her head. She was her.  Same voice always and she thought she was big at five years old and it turns out...

She was.