Normal

We are back from our adventures away, and sliding into a day at home, with the AC humming already and bread rising in the kitchen.

I love traveling, just the four of us. There is a subtle cementing of family identity that happens when we are on the road, not in route to see extended family, but just out for pleasure and to take pleasure in each other's company. We are always enlivened by the curiosity of the little guys, their eagerness and excitement and gratitude. We returned tired, but felt bathed in blessing.

What I found waiting for me was our beloved home, but also an ache, familiar after the last couple of years, but no less acute-- that in ten days or so Joshua will go back to school. Back to lunchbox and playground and worksheets and cubbies-- though perhaps not cubbies in first grade, perhaps a real desk. And from eight to two-thirty, he will be a citizen of the wider world, and Sam and I will hold down the smaller fort of home. Until Sam's turn, next year.

And I am faced with the question every mommy asks, nearly every day: Is this normal? This wrenching pain I feel at this little letting go? The tears that will flow at the slightest thought of the year beginning? Feeling fragile myself yet protective of these little hearts and minds? Greedy about hoarding these easy hours that drift by nearly unmarked by clock or bell?

I've searched my heart about homeschooling. I am not, at this season, called to it. I have not heard the deep YES that has marked every major decision John and I have made, and neither has he. Despite my mommy tears and our mutual trepidation, we know that this year, Joshua will be where he belongs, at our neighborhood elementary school. And we also fiercely know that we will not hand over our places as the biggest influences in his little life. We only loan him-- we do not give him away.

I used to see those back to school commercials, the ones where they played the song, "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," as blissful parents filled their carts and contemplated their little darlings going back to school. I heard other moms, counting down the days until they joined car line and relinquished their summer role. Was this something that would just happen to me, that as August waned, I would spur my littles out the door with glee?

It didn't. It hasn't. I don't think it will.

Is this normal?

All I am left with is the resolve to savor these days and the trust that I am only me, only one mommy, called to love and pray for these two little guys, to feel deeply, to laugh loud, to shed my tears and dry theirs. To get to know his teacher, to love the boys and girls who will join him on his adventure, to ask for meetings and send e-mails and be really present, here and there. There is no getting away from it-- the need for focus and attention, balanced with the grace to let go.

A little.