The Offering of Ourselves

Friends, I have taken a leap of faith. The preschool planets have aligned and we have found a lovely spot for our very busy, very social, very running-around-the-house-naked toddler. He is now spending his Monday through Friday mornings at a safe, clean, and positively adorable Montessori school …with cloth-covered snack tables, where children help themselves whenever they are hungry; with baskets of rolled up rugs, for each child to unroll and play upon in his own space; with pet canaries, barefooted teachers, and slippers on all of the children’s feet. Right off the bat, the school is more than I could have ever hoped for in a preschool.

At the same time, (see how the planets do align!) my writer’s shack has just been completed. And like the preschool, it is more than I could have hoped for, with its darling Dutch doors opening onto a garden of pineapple mint and sage, with its spa green walls and cedar planked ceiling. And my own poppy-red desk chair that calls me into boldness.  

Why then, when my three year old enters the gates of the school each morning, does it feel like he is dragging my heart along behind him – like a wooden pull toy without any wheels? My heart bumps along, feeling each uncooperative pebble, every uneven portion of ground, and gets wedged into cracks of earth along the way. The journey is uncomfortable, friends – even painful. 

If you’ve endured any kind of separation with children of your own, then you know precisely what I mean. The pain. The worry. The guilt. The doubt. The hope. And it’s all so much worse when you can hear the child screaming your name from the parking lot, as you climb reluctantly into your car on the second day of school. I’m killing him, you think, as your sweaty hands grip the steering wheel. But you’re not killing him any more than you were when at eighteen months, he cried in his crib at bedtime. Or when it was time to wean him from the watery milk of your breast. Or when he laid himself prostrate on the hardwood floor because you said “no” to ice cream for breakfast. And you’re not killing him anymore than you’re killing yourself, as you drive away from the sweet little school. But it does rather feel like you’re killing off tender pieces of yourself, doesn’t it? Like bits of you are dying. And bits of him are dying. I think this is because bits of each of you are, in fact, dying. Necessary bits – often referred to as the necessary losses of life…the ones that are ultimately good for us, even if they cause us pain in the meanwhile. It is often these everyday, necessary losses that lead us to the joy we so desire in our lives – the joy of finally completing a poem, say, or of sharing giggles with a new friend at the cloth-covered snack table.   

This time when my son and I will be apart from one another, as he goes out into the world as the separate individual that he is, learning to rise to new challenges, to gain confidence in adjusting to new circumstances, to build his own community, to work cooperatively in sandboxes and help himself to cut-up cantaloupe, is an essential time. He is exactly where he is supposed to be. But check this out: I am, too, exactly where I am supposed to be! The journey, you see, belongs to both of us. I, in the four walls of my writer’s shack, and he, in the four walls of his classroom, are figuring out what it means to be in new territory. How wonderful it is, then, to be in solidarity with one another during this time of transition.

As I enter these child-free hours, I am learning to rise to new challenges myself. I am learning to sit in my poppy-red desk chair and not get up every ten minutes for tea, for nibbles, or for whatever distraction I invent (and I invent many). I am earning to be disciplined in my work. And sometimes the work is hard, even lonely. It takes courage to write new words, and trust they will mean something. But I must do it. Nobody can do it with me, or for me. Nobody can even tell me how to do it. It is my fingers that must type the words I want to say. Meanwhile, my son walks through the preschool gates alone. Nobody can take those footsteps for him. He must be in the new classroom alone. He must place his shoes in the waiting cubby, all by himself. He must unroll his own rug, choose his own work from the shelf. We must – all of us – go out on our own to do the work we are meant to do. We may journey with one another in encouragement and empathy; we may be in solidarity with one another, journeying with each other in spirit. But nobody’s feet can walk the path we are meant to walk but our own.

As he readied himself for school this morning, my son and I shared this dialogue:

Mom, why do you have to work in your shack?

Because the world needs me, Henry...and the world needs you, too.

Why? Why does the world need you?

Because it needs each one of us. You will do your work and I will do mine. (It helps that in the language of Montessori, the word “work” is used to refer to the play that children do).

And it's true! The world does need each one of us to do our special work, as we are each a totally unique offering unto the earth.

Courage be with you as you offer your one-of-a-kind self to the world, my friends – in ways old and new.