An Open Letter To My Sons' Preschool Teachers on My Baby's "Graduation" Day

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Dear Preschool Teachers,

Oh, how I love you. I am hot mess in figuring out how to say good-bye to you. I just can’t figure out how to part with the love and kindness you have shown us over the past 6 years.

For my children, you have held hands and given hugs. You have celebrated every milestone. You have stayed calm in the midst of fits and frustration. You sang songs and rhymed rhymes. You taught them how to share, trade, or take turns. You taught them to do belly breathing when they started to get angry, to use their words to solve problems. You taught them to name their feelings and “breave in frough your nose yike dis when you get mad.”

You taught them love and kindness and patience and self-control. You oozed this out from your souls because your souls are so kind and so patient and so full of love.

You helped them remember to sit on the potty after lunch so you didn’t have to clean up their accidents, but if they had an accident, you helped them get cleaned up from that too.

But you were aware of all that.

What I don’t know if you realize is how much you helped me too. You showed me kindness and patience and love and self-control. You celebrated our family and our lives.

You taught me to “breave in frough my nose yike dis when I get mad.” You gave me the words to teach my children how to feel their feelings. You gave me an experienced example of calm in the storm.

But most importantly, you loved my children with your beautiful love after I kissed them goodbye and walked out of the preschool door. Because, for moms, drop-off at preschool feels like the moment you finish that really hard part of the workout and all you can do is put your hands on your knees and gulp oxygen for a minute.

You gave me time to have a conversation with a friend over a cup of coffee that was still hot without being interrupted a million times in the course of fifteen minutes. In addition, when my children were going to interrupt, you taught them to “tap tap tap” on my shoulder while I finished my thought, instead of jumping right in with their words.

You gave me time to regain my strength to be able to love on my children again.

You gave me time to cry alone in my house so I didn’t have to answer any questions about why mama was crying.

You gave me time to miss my children, time for my heart to replace the frustration with fondness.

You lightened my load by teaching them the things I was trying to teach them but couldn’t get through.

You gave me grace and forgiveness and encouragement. You told me I was doing a great job when I was sure I was scarring my children for life.

And it’s not just me. You call every child and every parent who walks through that door, “friend.” And you mean it.

When I think about all of the families your lives have touched, I marvel at how much love you have spread into this world. I marvel at how our school has changed lives and given parents so much peace and a chance to catch their breath.

You have been such a gift to my sons and to me, my friends. I am so very grateful for you. I am so very grateful for our school. And I am so very grateful for the internet so I can just send this to you instead of looking you in the eye and trying to say these things, because I look worse right now than after an episode of “This is Us.”

I love you dearly. Thank you for taking care of all of us.

Put Down the Bag of Cheetos and Call a Friend

Originally published on flatironswomen.blogspot.com

“How are you today?” chirped the cashier at the grocery store.

Panic settled into my stomach. My husband has been gone for far too long, and I had been with the kids around the clock because Presidents’ Day is for some reason “Presidents’ Six Day Weekend,” my grandma just died, I’m hormonal, and interacting with adult humans hasn’t happened in a while. Inside my head, a conversation erupted. 

She’s asking how you are, Em. How are you?

Yes, she’s asking, but she doesn’t want the real answer because the real answer is that I’m frustrated and lonely and exhausted from walking through the grocery store with three kids who were hitting each other and tripping over each other and whipping their coats at each other and playing “hot lava” with the different colored tiles on the floor and not paying attention to all of the other people who were just trying to get by so they could get their groceries and get on with their lives while I tried to buy food without gluten, dairy, coconut, peanuts, eggs, tree nuts, and chickpeas. I can’t just say, “Oh. I’m fine.” because I’m not fine, and I’m not a liar but I’m not about to tell all of my problems to the grocery store clerk because then I’ll be the crazy lady crying in the grocery store and gosh, it seems like I cry a lot when the grocery store check-out lady asks me how I am… 

It has been too long since anyone said words. She is staring at you. Say SOMETHING!

“Oh, I am how you are while grocery shopping with three kids, you know...” I finally answer.

She clearly did not know. She smiled in response and stopped asking me questions. 

This isn’t the first time I have had or almost 

had an emotional breakdown in the grocery store. 

One time when Danny was a newborn and had just gotten shots, a lady stopped to say how beautiful he was. I cried in that conversation. Then the time the kids and I all had a tummy bug and I took three sick kids around in a cart to buy ginger ale, saltines, and chicken soup. An older lady told me to “Enjoy every minute.” I smiled and walked away before angry tears and angry words spilled out of me.

Oh, and the time I was pregnant and some sensitive soul said, “Wow!  You’re huge!  How much longer do you have?  You’re about to pop.” And that other time when the super nice check-out lady said, “Kids are hard. You’re doing such a great job with them.”

As I collected my children from the penny horsey ride, I asked myself, Why are you always having weird emotional run-ins at the grocery store?

The answer came, Uh, Em? When you’re a mom, sometimes the check-out lady at the grocery store is the only person who ever asks you how you are.

Oh. That’s sad.

Yes, it is, Em.

We should do something about that!

Yes, we should. 

So I decided to do something. 

I went home and ate a bunch of Cheetos and ice cream while I binge-watched This Is Us and cried. 

It was not a great decision.  

And it didn’t do anything to fix my loneliness. So I texted my friend. “Do not binge-watch This Is Us after your grandma dies and you’re hormonal and your husband has been on work trips for most of the month.” 

Condolence texting ensued. Friend asked how I was. I asked how she was. 

Turns out, she had been needing a friend too. Go figure.

We exchanged prayers and thoughtful words. Actual plans for coffee… like with a date, a place, and a time were made. We didn't have any pretending or competitiveness or anything icky. Why didn't I call a friend sooner? 

I have so many awesome friends, but I forget to text them or I assume they were too busy or bogged down with their tiny people who are covering them in bodily fluids to want to hang out with me and my tiny humans. And I’m guessing that they wrongly think the same. Because I have friends who show up. I have friends who, when I say, “I have this crazy dream that I want to do this thing…”

They say, “Cool!  I’ll do it with you!” I forget how amazing my friends are sometimes. Maybe you do too? Maybe today is a great day to remember. Maybe today is a great day to text a friend and make actual plans with a date and a time and a place to reconnect and be actual humans. 

Maybe today is a great day to ask God to help us not do this crazy thing all alone. 

Because really… God and friends are way better company than Cheetos and ice cream.