Dear Joshua, On Your First Day of Kindergarten

Dear Joshua,

Today you started Kindergarten. I always fret and worry about you and big changes in your life, and man, this year is going to bring a few of those.

Kindergarten feels like such a big deal, a much bigger deal than any change we’ve weathered so far.

You feel so big and yet so small to me right now, in some sort of space in between.

Part of me wants to protect that smallness because your innocent and sweet spirit feels tied up in that. That’s probably silly. Oh well. Then I guess I’m silly.

I cried last night while talking to your dad about Kindergarten and what a momentous occasion this feels like. See, I’m a worrier. It’s kind of a thing I do when I know that change has to happen and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. The worry doesn’t stop the fact that things are changing, but I do it anyway.

I hope that I’ve been a positive enough force in your life for the past five years so that you make good choices. In friends, in schoolwork, in everything. I worry that I haven’t been, which says way more about me and my insecurities than about you, so there I go again being silly.

Deep down, I know that you are the embodiment of everything good in me and your dad. (And some of the not so good things, too, like that impatient streak of yours…) I know that you’ll be okay and that we’ve done alright and I’ll keep working on it and hoping for it just the same.

Because one thing I know is that you’re about to encounter all sorts of different people, with different ideas about the world and how to live in it. I know that you’re going to hear things I’m not ready for you to hear. I know that people are going to be mean just because they can be that way.

I want none of those things for you and know that they are inevitable.

I know that one day we won’t be the center of your world. That’s inevitable, too.

I know you’re about to get your heart broken, your feelings hurt, and sometimes you will have a terrible, horrible, no good, really bad day. I will fix it with ice cream or popsicles or snuggles for as long as you’ll let me.

I know that you are going to make mistakes as you grow and learn and navigate this world.

I know that I’m going to love you anyway. Always and forever.

Love, Mama

P.S. Please be nice to your sister. She is, after all, one of your best friends.