Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

A Letter to My Son, on His Last Day of Preschool

You hatched butterflies in preschool this spring. When I picked you up one sunny day in May, you were delighted to report that several of the butterflies had hatched.

“But where did the caterpillars go?” you asked.

We were so focused on the arrival of the butterflies that I guess we failed to prepare you for this seemingly obvious reality: The presence of the butterflies means the disappearance of the caterpillars.

As I tried to talk you through this, my words caught unexpectedly in my throat.

How can I blame you for wishing to keep both? My journey in motherhood thus far has been a lesson-on-repeat that I can’t hang on to two stages at once. Not only that, but I can neither speed up nor slow down this process of metamorphosis.

Hooray! You learned to walk! But I miss kissing your head now that you no longer ride, kangaroo-style, in your Baby Bjorn.

Hooray! You can go to sleep on your own! But I miss those hushed moments, rocking you in that hand-me-down glider chair.

Hooray! You learned how to make that tricky letter sound! But you no longer call your brother by that beloved lispy nickname.

As Augustine said, “Every change is a kind of death.”

As I watched you onstage at your preschool concert, doing the motions to the song with earnest concentration, I sense delight and wistfulness doing a tug-of-war in my heart. Each stage represents a new accomplishment, a new adventure, a new milestone. And I wouldn’t trade any of them in.

But let me tell you a secret, my preschool buddy: I love the butterflies. Still . . . I miss the caterpillars sometimes too.

Threenager Summer

It was the best of days; it was the hottest of days…

To have a three-year-old is to be thrust into a yearlong summer—the kind with record-breaking heat waves and furious squalls.

You sweat and you play. You love it and you long for a reprieve. You’re convinced you’ll melt, and you don’t want it to end. You duck for cover when tornadic winds touch down. You eat too many popsicles on the front porch.

In this season of parenting a child with a hankering for autonomy and bursting with so. many. opinions., I feel the heat and intensity of these days.

The words of a Van Morrison song have been echoing through my mind the last couple of months:

These are the days of the endless summer…

These are the days indeed.

These are the days of sloppy whispers in my ear: “I wuv you, Mama.” And these are the days of “Me not like you anymore!” when I limit his daily banana quota.

These are the days of “revenge peeing” in the corner (the term so aptly coined by Daniel). And these are the days of being met by squeals and full-body hugs when we walk in the door.

These are the days of brothers sneaking into bed to read together in the morning. And these are the days when Duplos also function as tiny plastic missiles.

These are the days of cute phrases like “croco-gator” (crocodile + alligator) and “mus-beard” (mustache + beard). And these are the days of meltdowns over the wrong color cereal bowl.

Endless summer. Isn’t that the pinky promise summer makes with us? You realize it’s not true—you know it can’t last forever—but as you wipe ice cream from sticky faces, as mosquitoes feast on bare ankles and fireflies blink languidly in the dusk, you can almost be lulled into believing the calendar page will never turn.

But in these long days of August, I catch a whiff of the changing of seasons.

Will this be the last time I buy a box of overpriced diaper genie refill bags?
Will this be the last time our boy dashes into our bed during a thunderstorm, thinking it’s bad guys?
Will this be the last time I do an emergency potty cleanup in the grocery store?
Will this be the last time I carry a sleep-heavy boy to his bed after a playground date?

“It goes by so fast,” they say. They’re right, of course. But I have no more power to slow down these years than I do to pause the sun in its descent or to delay the approach of autumn.

It seems so obvious, but it hit me like a gut punch today: This is the youngest my kids will ever be.

So what can I do, time-bound creature that I am? I suppose my only recourse is to savor the moments as I can and try to make a truce with the calendar. I’ll resist the longing to fast-forward or rewind or press pause. I’ll do my best to remember as many sweet things as I can, and just enough of the spicy bits to empathize with moms of other threenagers one day.

And maybe this afternoon, when the sun is beating down on us, we’ll sit on the porch and eat another popsicle.

Photo by Daniel Rische

A Letter to My Son on His First Day of Preschool

Dear Graham,

I dropped you off for your first day of preschool this morning. When I caught a glimpse of your profile, with your little blue backpack perched on your shoulders and your head with its cowlicky curls (combed, for once), my stomach did one of those renegade back flips.

You’ll only be gone a couple of hours, I know. But as I watched you march toward your own adventures, apart from me, I felt like I was standing at the top of a huge sledding hill. Once we start, gravity and velocity will inevitably take hold, and there will be no turning back, no slowing down. As I waved goodbye, your future flashed before my eyes—your first overnight away from home, your first solo drive, your first day of college. And me waving from the driveway, quelling the back flips in my stomach.

In the four years I’ve been your mama, I’ve been learning something about the mysterious tether that connects me to you. When you were an infant, you were tied to me by a literal cord; you went everywhere I went. When you were a newborn, you were, in a real sense, tied to my breast. As you grew, the tether extended to the carrier I strapped you in when we went on walks and made dinner together.

These days you still like to hold my hand, but I’m all too aware that this connection may be mere blinks from extinction. Already you are straining for microfreedoms. Already you are faster than I am. Already you aspire to go places I cannot go.

I am tempted to make grand promises as you step into your world apart from me:

I will protect you.
I will keep you safe.
I will fight off any would-be bullies.
I will make sure you have someone to play with.
I will always be there for you.

But of course I can’t promise those things. I can’t always be with you—and I shouldn’t.

And then I remember there is a better promise.

“Hold out your hand,” I say to you, my brown-eyed boy. And one by one, I take your fingers, reminding you of the One who will never leave you: I. Am. Always. With. You.

I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.

Psalm 73:23

I (thumb)
am (pointer finger)
always (middle finger)
with (ring finger)
you (pinkie)

It is a promise you can hold in your hand, even after I’m gone. A tether that can never be broken.

As I head home, my vision blurry, I carry the promise in my hand too, my own umbilical cord: I. Am. Always. With. You.

You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart . . . I’ll always be with you.

Christopher Robin to Winnie the Pooh (A. A. Milne)