basket case mama

There is this cloud hanging over me, over my calendar.  

It's hanging JUST overhead, right where I can't forget it but where it's not visible to others, and I can't seem to shake it.

It might seem dramatic to you (or maybe you have been there...TELL ME what made it easier, PLEASE!), but Lily is going to school, and I am almost sick.

I keep asking myself what I'm so upset about.  We've visited the school several times, we like the school and the people, we've gotten uniforms and books and socks and registered.  We've talking and prayed and researched and thought.  We all agree this is the way to go, the time, the place.

I've been an active participant, taking the steps to bring school forth.  

But now it's here, with just one final week left (October 1st is the day that all Haitian schools begin), and (gulp) I feel like I can't breathe when I think about it...and I can't stop thinking about it.

She is already a year behind in our current culture.  (But, two years early for our first culture.)  She's told me a hundred times she's ready to go, she wants to go.  All the other 3 year-olds in Saccanville are getting ready, all their mothers, almost done gathering all their supplies.  Their fathers, aside from forking over the fees, mostly don't see what the big deal is.  Everybody's doing it. 

 I'll still be doing quite a bit of daily homeschooling, obviously, for her English learning/writing/reading.  And it's only a few hours, it's just in the morning, and it's only a few miles down the road...

And yet.

 My baby girl is going to school.  My firstborn.  The one I have never left.  Never left anywhere.  Even when I'm teaching, I can hear her sweet laughter from the yard we share with the Seminary.  I've never taken her anywhere and left her there.  She was never ready.  Doesn't she still need me terribly?

 And now, with my left-conscious culture telling me she's BEYOND ready and my right-conscious culture telling me she's NO where close, I'm asking her and asking Matt and asking the LORD (Man, I am so glad she is HIS) and...

We're gonna try.  

I've been assured many times that Lily will not be the only 2nd year preschooler in tears...that I will not be the only mother outside the gate in tears.  I guess that helps.  Crying alone is always pretty awful.  Is group crying better?  

And if we try, and she can't (or I can't...as is more likely), we'll bring her back in and I will keep this little bird another year as best I can (and I'd be lying if I said I would be disappointed :)

But what if she can?  What if she is incredibly happy--as she says she will be--to be learning and practicing her Creole, making friends, eating her little tin plate of rice and beans, running through the school yard after the raggedy soccer ball--what'll I do then?  

I will have to face the painful truth all the more.  

My little girl is growing up.  

In Haiti, in America, in English, in Creole, with pizza or with rice...I don't care.

Growing up.

And there's nothing I can do about it.