This is your first of many graduation days.

Change is hard. It’s hard to leave and say goodbyes and hard to know that nothing will be the same. We always hope for the next step to be even better than the one we left – but as a woman who has lived a while, I will tell you that sometimes it is not.

I’ve tried to cherish every moment of your preschool. I’ve forsaken most of everything to be there. I’ve turned down auditions and jobs. I’ve learned how to stretch a dollar and a credit card to be able to see your growth and your innocence. I’ve read hundreds of picture books, found homes for countless art projects, photographed field trips and enrichment days, friendships, hugs and the sweet life of shapes on the carpet.

I’ve made preschool my home too. This preschool. This one. The one I’ve waited twelve years to be a part of.

I don’t want to leave either.

I want to stay in the world where we are apart no more than three or four hours. I want to stay where you can choose between a pattern or a rhyme.

I want your hands to stay plump and dimpled.

I want you to always run to me shouting “mama!” And I even want you to always say “mama, I don’t want you to go.”

I want your problems to always be resolved by holding hands, sharing what happened and how it made you feel, then asking how the other person felt and letting the apologies come easy. Accepting them easily. Forgiving.

You will grow and take steps further away from me, slowly but surely. I want to scream and dig in my heels and keep you in preschool always; safely gardening, painting, singing, playing in the sandbox and hugging friends.

The real world is cruel. These days, the world is sad.

Please let us stay in preschool. Please let us have the simplicity of free choice, circle time and outside time. Please let our biggest confusion always be how to cope with a backwards day.

I will try to let go. I will try to embrace change, for no other reason than I must set a good example. Well, and also because I have to. Time will go on.

I don’t know what the future will bring, but I will always hold these days as golden bliss.

first day

last day