long goodbyes
May 30, 2015 § 2 Comments
Nine years, more than half my days in motherhood have been spent in my husband’s childhood elementary school. It is the longest I have ever been a member of a single community; three preschools between two children and a kindergarten year in a different school district, my own education divided neatly between divorced parents. It has become a new normal, this space of my experience, and I cannot fathom the impossibility of goodbye.
Every day of the past nine years there has been a familiar face to welcome questions and offer guidance, hallways that lead to memories and individuals who have shared extraordinary measures of kindness as we stumbled over unfamiliar challenges toward personal success. I’ve leaned across the boundaries of parent-teacher conversations and witnessed loss and celebration with intimate expressions of grief and joy.
These men and women are my friends, but they are so much more than the sum of my memories. Despite the details we have shared over class conferences and play ground banter, these individuals are more complicated than my school year partnership permits. They have classrooms filled with families in need and years of families in friendship beyond my experiences. They are parents and children, friends and students, athletes and architects of dreams I only passingly understand.
Teachers and therapists, administrators and aides, they have chosen professions that anticipate personal investment and seasons of goodbye, but for me this moment feels impossible. I keep sounding out first sentences and last hellos not wanting to speak the inevitability of the week to come. A thank you that feels too small and a wish that feels too selfish.
scribblechic 
Bittersweet. I remember that feeling when my son graduated last year. You get to the point where, even though you don’t want it to end, you do want it to end because you need to move on and not feel the lump in your throat anymore.
It is an excruciating in between, a hesitant ending and eager beginning doesn’t leave much space for peace. Four more days.