Rediscovering the 'Me' in 'Mumeeeeeee'

'I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife’s badly-cooked dinners and untidy ways'. (Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, 1861)

June 30, 2010

One of those days - the important ones


Today my little boy grows up. Today, he graduates from his Montessori class. Today he, and his little classmates, will sing a few songs (which will inevitably reduce all the mums to tears), have a bit of a party, have one last go on the slide and we will then get into the car and drive home. We won’t be going back because from today, everything changes. The crèche that I first took my little six-month-old baby to has served its purpose. He starts school in September and we embark on an entirely new chapter in our family life.

I’ll never forget the first day I left him there. I felt utterly lost, as if one of my limbs had been removed. I pottered around the house aimlessly, checking the clock to see whether I could go and collect him yet. I think I even resorted to hoovering to pass the time. He was only there for an hour.

There are days when I have left that crèche feeling like the worst mum in the world; prising my crying son from my leg because I have to go and catch the train or I’ll be late for work – again. All I can hear as I sit on the train is his tiny voice, “Mummy, I want my mummy.”

There was the day when he proudly showed off his new baby brother. I thought he was such a big boy at the time. It was only much later that I realised he was really still a baby himself.

There were the endless days when I collected him to be told that, yet again, he’d refused to eat anything and the wonderful day when he, finally, ate every last scrap and asked for more.
There have been days when I’ve rushed back from work to collect and comfort my sick child; sunny days when we’ve strolled casually home sharing licks from an ice cream; snowy days where we’ve trudged along in our wellies and warmed up with hot chocolate back at home.

There are days when I’ve stopped and chatted idly to the other mums and days when I’ve bundled everyone into the car in a stress and screeched out of the car park because I left the oven on.

There are days when I have collected a grumpy, tired little boy who is cross with his mummy for some reason or other. There are many more days when I’ve collected a little boy who has a beaming smile, a cuddle, a kiss and a lovely picture for me.

We’ve both made some wonderful friends along the way. Hopefully friends for life, despite the fact that we’ll all be going our separate ways in the autumn.

There are many days in life when everything just stays predictably the same and there are the occasional, important days when everything suddenly changes. Today is one of those days.

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6 comments:

  1. Mini starts school in September and at the moment my heart is breaking at him growing up too fast. This post made me cry tears of happiness tinged with sadness

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  2. Happy days are still ahead though - so many memories already but so many more to come! x

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  3. Aww, how lovely. My oldest went to a Montessori preschool and loved it for the most part. My middle son did not thrive there at all and I had to pull him out. I eventually enrolled him in a parochial one and he did so well. These days my boys have these amazing debates on God and religion, I think on account of those early beginnings. But, I digress -- congrats to your little one and hugs to you. x

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  4. Lovely tearjerker of a post.

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  5. Aahh. Happy graduation! It's so hard isn't it? One of mine will be starting secondary in September - i can hardly believe it. Seems like yesterday he was starting at nursery.

    Lovely post.

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  6. *sniff sniff* A really gorgeous post, thank you. I love it when you go to pick them up and they're happy, makes me feel less bad for leaving him there in the first place!

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