Dear Sara,

This afternoon after school, you crawled up on my lap with your chocolate milk mustache, braids long since fallen out, something black and smudgy above your right eyebrow, paint on your left leg, drawings all over your arms done with the pen you won out of the class treasure box for having worked hard in reading group, and shins covered in bruises from far too enthusiastic play on the monkey bars.

Then you smiled with your tiny smile, so powerful despite its size, and said, “Mommy, I have here 3 feathers.  I’d like to teach you a few things about birds…” and you proceeded into a lovely and surprisingly well thought out lecture about flight and nest-building, and how birds are vertebrates, and some are smooth, and some are not.  Apparently the smooth vs. not smooth information was quite interesting to you.

Kindergarten has been an adjustment, to put it mildly; but Sara, I am proud of you.  Some nights you pass out at 7 pm.  Some afternoons you speak as if you are possessed by a demon on the way home.  But every single morning, you jump out of bed, ready to try again.  You’ve made a ton of friends.  Every day you fill your fellow scholars’ mailboxes with pictures drawn especially for them.  I’ve heard you leave no mailbox unstuffed.  And every blessed recess you share with your sister, you play with Kelly on the playground, pulling her on the bike, teaching her the politics of the tire swing (seriously, the Middle East is a more stable area than your school’s 2 tire swings…Ah!  The drama!), and telling her you’re there to help ease her “homesickedness”.

I’m sure we have more adjustments to make.  More flashcards to practice.  More attention to be paid to the smell in your lunchbox.  But we’re making it kid.  Together, you and I, as we always have, baby step by baby step, are making it.

Mommy knows Ducky.  Mommy knows.

Love, Mommy