Monday, April 13, 2009

butterfly factories

I remember the day I took J to first grade. My very last to begin their first day of first grade. I was fine, really. Until I walked past the kindergarten classrooms and looked above the door to his classroom from last year, and read: Butterfly Factory.

The tears, the flood of emotion. I ran to my car, it couldn't have been seconds before I was crying uncontrollably. I should be able to handle this. I have done this three times. But alas, this was the worst.

G started 7th grade that day as well, I remember when it was he who was beginning his venture in education, public at that. I knew that he was no longer all mine. I had to put aside all the selfishness that I was so good at, and let others enjoy this creation, the beauty of his life.

There would be no more snack, nap, caterpillars in the classroom. Why did I blink?

What happened that I was sending my fourth off to first grade, it all happened so fast.

1 comment:

susette said...

You know what's even harder is when they all start moving out of the house. I had three do it in less than two years. It just tears your heart out. It's so hard to let them be independent and out on their own.

on marriage

'Will you, um, marry me?' I haven't seen you in weeks! You don't look happy or excited about the prospect of our marriage! You're asking me to give up my - my freedom, my joie de vivre for an institution that fails as often as it succeeds? And why should I marry you anyway? I mean, why do you wanna marry me? Besides some bourgeois desire to fulfill an ideal that society embeds in us from an early age to promote a consumer capitalist agenda?
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