It strikes me as I am wading through the piles of brightly coloured Barbie lunch boxes and Hannah Montana backpacks of various shapes and sizes, looking for the perfect back-to-school paraphernalia; that before I know it, my youngest will be heading off into the world. It’s the End of an Era, there are no more babies in our house and none on the horizon. So this is it, my baby girl will leave for grade one. She will head off on Tuesday with little thought to her teary-eyed mother, who will no doubt spend the entire day wallowing in the fading memories of every milestone she has surpassed thus far in her short independent life.

Which new phase has troubled me the most? It’s hard to say, maybe the day she told me she wanted to pick out her own clothes, because we “don’t know fashion.” Or when she toilet trained and had to move into a big girl bed in order to go to the bathroom without scaling the side of the crib, two painful milestones in one! It might even have been the day she decided to start brushing her own hair….*sigh*

It’s hard to say which milestone was the most difficult for Mommy, although I distinctly remember the pain of putting away her tiny pink go-go boots  and buying Princess sippy cups and a toddler bed. Has it been 6 years since I was told she’d need to be born premature at 34 weeks? How did the minutes turn into months and years without my noticing? How will I make it through the next 12 years before she goes to college and gets married? Am I the only one who feels like the next decade is a runaway train and I’m barely hanging on? Does anyone else burst into tears while watching “Say Yes to the Dress”?

So between 8:30am and 3:00pm between Monday to Friday I will be a childless mother…wondering if she’s ok; are the other kids being nice to her? Has someone told her that her hair looks funny or her shoes aren’t cool? Is she eating her lunch? Is she having fun? Does she miss staying home with Mommy as much as I miss having her home? Has she learned any bad words today? Is the teacher gentle, does she understand her independenct spirit? Will she ever learn to love reading? Have we done a good job preparing her for this time in her life? What have we forgotten to teach her? Will she be forever damaged because she can follow a recipe and make cookies but can’t read as well as her brother could entering grade one?

I realize that I am over-reacting, and surely I’m not the first mother to see grade one as the beginning of the end. My rational side says there are a million more milestones on the horizon that will be equally exciting and emotional for us both. The school age years will blend into the teeny-bopper phase and then the tumultuous teens, which I’m told is more painful and rewarding than any valley I have passed through thus far.

And so I reach up and pluck a leopard print lunch box off the shelf and put it into a pink backpack and head to the grocery section for a box of fruit roll-ups, because after all…she’s only six and it’s only grade one. (Besides,  I made it through the first child going to grade one, so I’m sure I’ll live through this one too.)