My baby finishes primary school today. Not the new baby who is gurgling in the pram beside me as I write this, but his twelve-year-old sister – who was his age yesterday and is now a gangly pre-teen who fills me with joy and frustration in almost equal measure.
I’ve had about six cups of tea today and they haven’t taken the edge off the train smash that I am at the thought of flying past this milestone. I fuel my instability with a tortuous glance at her kindergarten photo – the one we took on her first day, of me crouching down at her level, holding her hands, staring lovingly into her anxious little face and willing her to be confident.
Whatever I did that day, it worked. Not immediately, mind – she was barnacled to my ankle at every morning drop-off for the first five weeks and, at the time, I thought it would never end.
Now it’s me – barnacled to her ankle, as I watch her race past me and clatter the front door behind her, despite my telling her every morning not to slam it. Racing past me full stop.
She’s clutching an old school polo shirt and a heap of textas for everyone to graffiti their names on it today. The music she’s listening to is awful. She looks at me like I came down last week in the Queanbeyan flood. The bathroom reeks of way too much hair-removal cream, after I let her use it for the first time for tonight’s farewell disco, despite her being far too young (ie. exactly the same age that I was when I first shaved my legs, but that was different! I felt much older than she looks!)
I thought it would never end, and now it has.
‘I can’t believe it’s her last day of primary school,’ I sob, when my husband asks me what’s wrong.
‘Oh well,’ he replies. ‘She’ll start high school next year.’
I look at him incredulously – carrying our seven-week-old baby, who he’s just changed, fed and burped, as well as cup of tea that he’s made for me – and wonder how he could have gone so far wrong with that comment.
It occurs to me that this was perhaps not, in hindsight, the best week to choose to wean the baby. That particular horse has, however, well and truly bolted, and there must be a way of riding this roller-coaster without re-lactating.
I have a flashback to my own final day of primary school. The big party we had at Anna Green’s house. The kissing competition...
Right! That’s it! I need a distraction, and I need one fast. It’s times like this that you need the soothing fluffiness of ABBA, and what could be more harmless than watching Mamma Mia on DVD?
An hour later, I’m submerged in a swamp of used tissues and empty chocolate wrappers, with Meryl Streep’s Slipping Through my Fingers on continuous loop.
I realise I have precisely an hour and fifteen minutes to pull myself together before my daughter gets home, takes one look at me and accuses me of being a weirdo/freak/loser etc before instructing me not to be embarrassing at the presentation evening (at which, I kid you not, they are showing a slide-show of their school journey, set to music).
I rifle through the letter box, hoping to find a Round Robin Christmas letter but finding instead a letter from the high school she’s going to. Dare I open it?
It’s addressed to the 2011 Year Seven parents and outlines what will happen in the first week of school. As I read through it, I find it strangely comforting. The list of stationery requirements includes coloured pencils. Sounds positively kindergartenish. It says they’ll take all students to the buses on the first day, whether they’re catching the bus that day or not, just so they become familiar with their bus. How reassuringly hand-holding-ish.
By the time she gets home I realise she’s still a little fish - about to be thrown into a big pond, and the journey is far from over. We’re only half way there...
Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning, waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile... I’m glad whenever I can share her laughter, that funny little girl.
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