Every summer seems to go by way too quickly. Of course it's hard to give up mornings with no alarms, the only demands on your time being self-imposed, and almost total freedom to choose what you do and when. And it's crazily difficult to complain about this when most of the people you complain to are lucky to get a week or two of that a year, let alone a couple months. But that doesn't make me any less reluctant to be going back to work tomorrow.
This is my last summer before True starts school. She's going out into the great wide world and it will work on her and change her from a being almost entirely of my own making. She hit me with the god thing for the first time today. She asked how people grow in mom tummies, and I said it was kind of like the plants she'd seen grow, starting like from a seed, with one tiny cell that splits and grows and changes and becomes a whole baby. And that every little cell knows it's job, and what to become and what to do. "Amazing, huh?" I asked. "Uncle Bob (and that's a pedophilic phrase in any religion) says we have to follow the rules of god because he made us." I calmly ask, "Who is god?" and she replies, "Somebody." Hmmmmm.
It's not like she isn't going to eventually hear about god, and since dad and mom don't talk about it, it wasn't going to be from us. And the "rules of god" she's being told to follow are mostly commandment type stuff, which I whole heartedly support. But the fact that other forces are forming her thoughts and beliefs and self is driving me batty! You all know how I hate people touching my stuff! Here is this as close to perfect little person as you are ever going to see, and though the CDC had their hands in there, they were doing exactly what I would have been doing myself, though usually even better, so it was more reinforcing than interfering. But now, other people are going to be poking and molding and messing with what I made! It's like putting up a gorgeous art piece, and other people coming along and adding a flourish, or changing a color, or changing a horse to a zebra!
I realize this sounds like I don't want her to hear any ideas except mine, and that is 180 degrees from the truth. I'm just not ready for it to be time for that. Too much else comes along with it and I want my perfect, sheltered, completely unharmed girl to stay that way for a little while longer. I've taught kindergarten, and I know what it's like. Kindergarteners are School Kids. They are their own people entirely separate from their parents. I am completely outside of a piece of her life and that is just too weird for me.
So while it is a huge drag to be going back to work, it's letting go of this summer that is really bumming me out.
