It's the end of the world as we know it....

Okay.  It's not actually the end of the world as we know it.  It's really just the end of the year as we know it.  But my Boy-o and I are not feeling fine. 

Boy-o's Junior Kindergarten year is coming to an end tomorrow.  The last day of friends, his classroom morning 'home' for the last several months, and his beloved teacher (who I think is, after Diego of course, his first love) will all be a thing of the past as of tomorrow afternoon.  Now, transitions are always hard for Boy-o.  But this one is hitting particularly hard.  For the last several days, he has been prone to bouts of inexplicable teary/grumpy/tiredness, and today he said to me, after one of several spontaneous combustions:  "I just think I need to go to Junior Kindergarten again.  I don't want to leave!  My days will NEVER have any fun AGAIN!"  And my heart broke a little for him.  Because transitions are hard for anybody, but especially so for him.  And he is especially fond of his school grown-ups.  And leaving is a particular trigger.  Tomorrow will be hard, hard, hard for my big-hearted kiddo.

And why does my world feel like it's ending?  It's not of course.  But I seem to be greeting the end of the school year with a growing sense of constriction winding its way around my body.  It's not that I don't want to have Boy-o home with me.  That isn't the issue at all.  Boy-o is fantastic and generally all kinds of fun.  The issue for me becomes that I lose my way out.  My place to go.  Since September, from Monday to Thursday, I've loaded up three kids into the car (this bit, I won't miss, I must confess), schlepped them across town to school, and then had the relative freedom to explore, hangout, have coffee with friends whilst only chasing one child, write during Girlio's carnap.  Moreover I had a purpose, a place to go, to be, a reason to leave the house.  It's sounds pathetic.  I get that.  It feels pathetic to write it down.  But all of the sudden, my clear route out of the house seems murkier and muddier and less defined.   Wahhhhhh!

End of the year growing pains:  not just for kids.