At lunch, her face crumpled, or flattened out rather, chin pulled down, eyes wide and blinking. She was trying not to cry. 

“Are you OK?” I asked.

Her mouth tightened from its frown, and she took a minute before she answered.

“I’m going to miss Mrs. Foley,” she said, the last word rising into a near wail. “I’m sad she isn’t going to be my teacher anymore.”

Then my big girl sighed and took another bite of her pizza.

***

Last Thursday night, as I put teacher gifts together and sat down to write notes, my mind flashed back to the first day of school:

Mrs. Foley read The Kissing Hand. When she asked a question, my big girl’s hand shot up and she answered in a loud clear voice. I wondered where my shy preschooler had gone.

Now I wonder where this year has gone. Weren’t we just chasing the bus up to school on that first day?

In the last few months, my big girl has started reading and writing. She’s riding a bike without training wheels “on the pavement!” and I let her go to the end of the street and back by herself. She lost her first tooth.

The images of her year ran through my mind as we wrap up this year, moving at fast-forward speed as they seemed to have done. Friday at the picnic, I smiled as my big girl took her certificate and squealed with her friends under the water in the spray park, and I felt the sadness of an ending too. 

***

Yesterday I came downstairs after quiet time, and as I opened the fridge to get the iced coffee, I saw the note stuck up with a magnet:

I am sad.

As I set the coffee on the counter, another paper fluttered to the floor. I stooped to pick it up.

I am sad.

I saw her trying not to cry face again. I felt my own end of the year, my baby’s growing up so fast happy-sadness. I remembered the feeling of “this will never be again” even as a kid.

I found I am sad sprinkled all over the house. I gave my big girl a hug and looked her in the eye. “You really are sad, aren’t you?”

She nodded, eyes big with tears that didn’t fall again.

“It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to miss your teacher. I’m so glad you loved her and had such a good year in kindergarten.”

She nodded again and snuggled into my hug. We sat for a moment, paused in that ending place.

After she squirmed out of my arms and went off to play, I looked again at the note, amazed because it wasn’t so long ago that she couldn’t write. It wasn’t so long ago she didn’t know how to say I am sad. Those days of thrashing tantrums as she learnedon the floor seem so long ago and not.

I am not sad to have said good-bye to tantrums, but I feel the tug of what was, what is passing, even as I embrace what comes.

It’s the first day of summer vacation. Yesterday’s rain has passed. My big girl came down this morning smile wide and bright. The summer stretches before us. with beach and camping and picking blueberries to look forward to. At breakfast, her face clouded, “I’m still a little sad,” she said. And then she noticed the squash flowers in the garden and the log with a hole that would make a special fairy house. She’s holding what’s passing and what is and what’s coming in this ending-beginning time of year.

Write with Me Wednesday

Write about an ending today, either one you are experiencing or anticipating or one from your past.

Were you sad? happy? relieved?

Choose one moment from that time of end. Put yourself in that moment. Start writing there.