Lasts and Firsts

Sam and the enormous beyond.

Hoo, boy.  What a roller coaster of a day.

This morning, I dropped Caroline off at her new playgroup that she'll be in once a week this fall, and Sam and I headed out for our last morning together before he starts Kindergarten next week.  All this last year and some of this summer, he and I have had our Thursday morning date.  It usually involved a trip to Fresh Flours in Ballard for a latte for me and a shared pastry served up by our favorite barista, coincidentally also named Sam.  We'd sit in the window and people-dog-bird watch and chat, or read together a chapter book like Ramona or one of the Junie B. stories.  Then around 10:30, we'd amble over to the OAC for some time in the pool.  Sam is a fairly capable swimmer now, so we'd laugh and do laps together and occasionally I'd get creamed by a cannonball.  Then, we'd shower and get dressed and go to pick up Caroline.

This time, Sam wanted to do a bike ride.  We met a friend for coffee and a donut for fuel, then took our bikes on the Mothership to Gasworks Park.  We rode to the north edge of the U and on the way back stopped at an apple tree along the path, where Sam shimmied up the trunk and tossed down a few choice pieces of fruit.  We stuffed them in our pockets and washed them in the water fountain at the park, then climbed up Kite Hill while munching them.  Sam deemed his too sour and tossed it bites and all to the ambling geese, who greedily stabbed at it.  We both laughed hard when I tossed mine and it bounced unpredictably and hit a surprised goose in the butt, in the way things like that are only funny to a six-year-old and his mother.

I was on shaky ground by the time we got home after picking up Caroline and making a quick stop for lunch.  A few small, inconsequential chicken-peck type of annoyances sent me into a bit of an emotional swamp, so I turned on the TV to Curious George and hopped in the shower hoping to somehow gain some perspective while in there.  When it crossed my mind to contact a friend to pray for me, it occurred to me that I can pray for myself...I am actually allowed to do that.  So after getting dressed, TV still on and kids still occupied, I headed downstairs and grabbed my rosary.

Yes, the enormous kid rosary.

And the dam broke and the tears came.  Before the words of the Hail Mary were even out of my mouth, drops were dripping off the end of my nose.  As I traveled the beads, my mind was turned toward what had been playing around the edge all day:  Jesus' first miracle at the wedding at Cana, the nativity of his ministry, his reluctance to begin it ("Woman, it is not yet my time!") and Mary's gentle prompt ("Do whatever he tells you to do.").  If there was anyone who understood how hard it is to let go of a child and allow them to fulfill their destiny, no matter what it would hold or how wrenching it was for you, it was certainly her.

Sam is no Jesus, and I am certainly no Mary (I'm not very good at the "pondering things silently her the heart" part - I'm more of a "tell everyone loudly how she's feeling and maybe make a joke about it" kind of girl).  Kindergarten isn't exactly turning water to wine.  But there is a hard truth to this time.  Sam has started his path away from me and toward his own purpose.  Truly, it started from the moment he was born.  But this, in a little way, is the first of many small Canas.  I am urging him onto a path that goes away from me.  For the first time, he will spend more waking hours during the week away from me than with.  He'll be finding out who he is apart from me, what decisions he makes, what people he likes, what activities thrill him.  I'll be there to support, but he'll mostly be on his own in the hours he's at school.

What will he find out?  What will I find out?  It's a mystery, just as it probably was to that holy woman almost 2000 years ago.

But we both certainly could appreciate at the time the enormity of the first step on the path, the hesitant movement towards an unknown destiny, for both mother and child.