To William, on your first day of preschool

Some thoughts on hope and fear for my eldest

Dear William,

Today is your first day of preschool. I can hardly believe this day is here. 

Actually, that’s not entirely true. 

Your first day of preschool should have been last fall. But the pandemic kept your school as virtual-only for most of the last school year, and then outdoor-only with your mama present for the last few weeks.

So instead, this is it. Your first day of in-person preschool. You are a little bit excited. At the open house you learned there is paint and playdough available every single day. And there are lots of books to read and cars to play with. You like the idea of all of this. 

But you are a lot a bit nervous. A few weeks ago, you realized that school means you stay and Mama and Charles leave. Your first sustained, repetitive separation from your brother since he was born. Your first sustained, repetitive separation from me since you were born. Since the moment you looked at me and asked “Will you go to school with me, Mama?” we have talked many times about how all of this will go. We have read books about loving each other even when we are apart, about how missing each other will feel. We have talked about the order of your day at school, and how Mama and brother will be there at the end of every day. And tonight, we sprinkled magical “ready confetti” under your pillow to help with the jitters. 

All of this has seemed to help some. But I have a feeling there still may be some tears tomorrow. And that’s ok. This is a big step — one made all the bigger and more confusing by what’s been asked of you the last 18 months as your world shut down and then stayed shut down far longer than any adult’s world has. What will it feel like for you to suddenly be surrounded by people your own age — 17 of them — when you’ve not seen more than two friends at a time in so long? What will it be like to make friends when you are all wearing masks? Will we even be able to have this semblance of a normal school year or will we spend large chunks of time quarantining and testing as we wait and wait and wait some more for your age group to be eligible for a vaccine, for parents to decide if they even will vaccinate their young children? 

Maybe I am asking unnecessary questions. Masks are very matter-of-course to you —they’ve been necessary for a quarter of your life. So you probably won’t even think twice about them while making friends. And you so desperately want to make friends. Nearly every imaginary game you have played for months involves your Hot Wheels being friends and asking how each other are feeling or trucks being your friends and taking turns playing a board game. You’re so eager to figure out how friendship works, and I have both mourned that you haven’t really had the chance until now and celebrated that at least you will finally have that chance. And everyone involved in your school will wear masks and all the adults are vaccinated, so you are as safe as we can make you while we give you this experience. So probably, I am just paying a debt I don’t owe with these worries. I hope I am.

But I want you to know this, on the cusp of the first big beginning of your life: Every beginning brings both hope and fear. The two are intertwined so deeply you cannot separate them. What matters is which one you give power. 

This is a reminder to me as much as it is a lesson to you. It’s a reminder I sorely need after a year and half where fear and worry have pushed a lot of other things to the side. Although I have done my best to keep your world somewhat normal, I cannot pretend that the version of me you have received since this all began has not battled fear and worry and often lost. 

And so, since I have spent so much of this letter giving power to fear, I now must endeavor to give power to hope, too. For this is what I want you to learn to do before all of life’s big and small leaps, and I can only teach you to do this if I do it myself. 

So here are my hopes for this school year. I hope you have an incredible amount of fun. I hope you create art and make playdough sculptures and collage your heart out (which may be impossible given how much you love glue and tape). I hope more often than not I am met with a smile and boundless enthusiasm when I pick you up. I hope that you learn to write your name and draw a face because those are two things you really seem to want to learn. I hope you learn a thousand somewhat annoying kid songs that you sing on repeat because you love them so much. I hope you read a ton of books and discover new favorites. I hope your confidence grows as you learn more and more how to do things for yourself, as you see all that you are capable of.

But mostly what I hope is this: I hope you make a true friend. I hope that you bond over a shared interest or a game the two of you invent. I hope that you come home full of joy and bouncing with excitement to tell me all you played together. I hope that you look forward to school so that you can play with your friend even more. I hope that this friendship grows and changes as the two of you grow and change during this school year. I hope that you learn to fight and apologize and forgive. I hope that you learn the joy of laughing together, of creating a shared language full of memories and plans and silly moments. 

Fear can be a heavy thing. And hope often feels too light. It is so easy, my beautiful boy, to let the heaviness of fear drag down our hopes. Every “what if” is a tug on a balloon’s string; every worry is a small weight tied to its ribbon. It takes so little to keep hope grounded. But we can choose to let the string go, to cut the weight off. Hope can fly. We just have to let it. 

Love,

Mama