Last of the Firsts

I’m sitting here at my favorite local coffee shop after dropping the boys off at school. All of them…. at the same elementary school…. for the first time ever. And the tears are flowing. Not from them — oh no — but from me.

How did we get here? How is my last baby off to kindergarten? Everyone warned me it would go so, so fast and they were painfully, acutely right. Even though I knew it would go fast because I had the proof standing right in front of me — proof in the form of toddlers who were no longer babies and big kids who were no longer toddlers — these milestone moments have a way of knocking me off my feet and, truthfully, they hurt. They hurt in the way it hurts when a birthday rolls around and you realize you’ll never have access to the 4-year-old version of your kid again. They hurt in the way your heart squeezes when your child stops saying “lello” and replaces it with the correct but oh-so-grown-up pronunciation “yellow.”

Part of me thought today would be a day I’d feel relief. I’ve spent more than 11 years cramming the non-motherhood pieces of my life into small pockets of “me time;” brief windows of free time I’d grasp through nap times, preschool drop offs, gym childcare and occasional help. It felt intense, impossible at times, stressful for sure but, for the most part, absolutely overflowing with joy. It never felt possible for me to have a to-do list with everything checked off but it also didn’t matter because LOOK at what I got to pour my heart into everyday: A family I love in a way I will never be able to capture into words.

Ever since the boys were toddlers, Ryan and I have said the same lines back and forth with them before bed. “I love you bigger than a rocket ship!” “I love you bigger than the moon!” and so on. Over the summer I joked that Ryder rage baited me one night when he jokingly said, “I love you more than you love me.” Oh heck no, my child. I very matter-of-factly told him that was impossible. My love for him and his brothers and his dad is bigger than Ryder’s eight-year-old brain could ever imagine.

“Is it really bigger than a rocket ship?” he asked. “Much, much bigger,” I assured him. It’s a soul-squeezing kind of love that bubbles over on days like today. Days that remind me my children are growing up, exactly the way I hoped and prayed they would. But that doesn’t mean watching them confidently walk into their elementary school — my three no-longer-little-kids in a row — doesn’t serve as a gut-punch that ALL of this is finite. It’s all so beautiful and wonderful but my gosh why can’t it all just slow down?

I read this quote that I’ve been thinking about a lot: “The hardest part about parenting is raising the one thing you can’t live without to be able to live without you.” Ooph isn’t that the truth? Because that is the goal, right? To raise kind, confident, loving, hard-working, independent, thoughtful humans who can go out into the world on their own and make a positive impact. Ryan and I have repeatedly talked about how this phase of life we’re living right now is golden to us. We’re holding onto it hard while trying to get better at letting go, little by little. But it sure does wreck me sometimes.

For now, I’ll just sit here with wet eyes, feeling so grateful for motherhood and the way I’ve been given the gift of a love so big it can make me ache so much.