Today my life sped by in unparalleled color and blurring fusion as a morning I have hoped for and dreaded came and went with barely the inkling of an evidence that my heart had somehow torn and stretched all in a blink as my daughter took up her uniform and her back-pack to go to kindergarten.
Oh, I know, its a little thing... but so was she just yesterday.
When did the little pink tennis shoes that sit on my writing desk and warm my heart get traded for the black leather mary-janes she wore today? When did the precious purple quilted jacket get traded for the plaid of the private school uniform? When did she suddenly grow that tall?!
Each step I remember as if it were just yesterday... and sometimes it feels as if it were. I remember buying each new size of shoe, and the day her acceptance letter came from the school; but oh, how much more quickly it all ensued than my heart had somehow expected.
As she clung to my arms this morning, nothing inside of me wanted to leave her side. It was as if the insides of me were battling with the situation, saying, "Would someone just scoot a grown-up chair over to the end my daughter's table, please? I'm just going to stay and take the class with her!"
I am so proud of my little girl, but sad to the point of tears that press upon the surface of my eyes as I tell them not to fall. I guess that as the grey hair finds me ever-more-quickly, so too must the growth of my children. I wouldn't have it any other way, I know; but the heart within me wonders... for this morning, as she clung to me and I knelt beside her table, we held hands and the world, for me, stopped but for a moment... and there in the suspension of time and space I drank deep of the moment and wondered why it could not have been longer as I reluctantly walked away.
A final whisper, "Ich bin sehr stolz von dir"... and my heart was left on a kindergarten table.
Beauty is for a moment and then it grows and becomes again. And such is the state of the beauty walking through my heart as it giggles and laughs, and grows again, never realizing that my heart has stretched and ached, and smiled along the way.
Ich bin sehr stolz von dir, Jordan! Hoo-ah!
Daddy
