I had been waiting for the morning that was not so easy. Em has been a champ about a new school, a new schedule, the school bus. Knowing all the while she will be changing schools again in a few short weeks when we move.
This morning the tears came streaming down her face when we left for the bus stop. She was trying to articulate just exactly what had her so upset. I know she is tired. She has asked to go to bed early for the past week. I told her I’d give her a ride to school today, just to buy us a few minutes so she could wipe her tears from her face.
She was pretty quiet on the ride to school. She stopped crying long enough to tell me that I was going the “wrong way, Mom… are you sure you know how to get there?” But mostly she rode in silence.
We were early when we pulled in the parking lot. “I just don’t WANT to be a big girl.” She was climbing out of her car seat and opening the door. I rounded the car to meet her as she put on her back pack, making my very tall girl suddenly seem so very tiny. “It seems like I am just gonna be a grown up just like THAT.”
Sometimes as a parent I am at a loss. My heart was saying “Go home, fuck school! Eat candy! Watch cartoons!!” But I dug deep and all I came up with was a simple answer. “I know, Em. It IS crazy. I wake up every day and I have no idea how I became I grown up. I still feel pretty much the same as I always did on the inside. Nothing really ever changed for me.”
She hugged me. And she didn’t see me get teary. But she knew. She always knows. “Really?” She pulled back from my neck and looked at me like she just might roll her eyes.
“Really. I still feel like a kid. And THAT is why I am AWESOME.” And then she smiled. And shook her head. I think she thinks I was kidding.
Excitement on the side 
I want to meet your friend Steph some day…she might be even more neurotic about crazy stuff than you are. Which would make me THIRD on the list of neurosis-plagued people I know. Loved having you guys up here this weekend…miss the little lady even though she wasn’t her ordinarily ridiculously easy-to-have-around child. I’m so glad I’m not six anymore…but I AM glad that I’m still nine.
Seriously…when I get a notice that you have a new entry, I wait until I’m alone to read it. You make me cry EVERY time I read your blog. So I read this post and THEN read the previous dog post….ACK….it’s like our life paralleled. I have the same picture of Sarah and our Jake (he’s a black lab too). I cried BEFORE we even picked Jake up from the breeder about the kid we MIGHT someday have getting sad about the dog we didn’t even have yet dying. We weren’t even married yet!!!!! Write on, Sister.
Steph
Ha, good to know I am not alone in my dog based neurosis. :)
But we know, that IS why you are Awesome! Proud of you two little ladies.