I have a love/hate feeling when I leave my daughter at preschool when she’s crying. It makes me feel so awful, driving past, seeing her in the teacher’s arms looking at me and bawling, her mouth open wide, her eyes pleading with me to stop. And then there’s the heartbreaking cry of “Mama! Mommy!”
I feel like an asshole waving, making happy faces, then showing her the butt of my car slowly moving away.
But a part of me is warmed by being so needed. Is that messed up?
Yesterday, at the beach I noticed how much taller she seemed, how long her hair was. My almost four-year-old was a real live girl! It makes me sad sometimes to see her slowly moving away, just like my car moves away from her every morning. There’s nothing I can do, and so the cry for mommy comes as a relief at times, a sweet sound, reminding me she is still my real girl and will be for a long time.
My God, that is the most sentimental post I’ve ever written and will probably ever write. If someone else wrote that I’d be all, “Bor-ing.”