Letting Go

My daughter just finished her first real week of kindergarten. I have to say I'm a pretty sad mommy right now. She seems so different now, so grown up. I remember seeing her right after her brother was born and thinking that she didn't look like the same girl as she was just hours earlier. She looked so much older than the little girl that she was and that is how I feel now. I look at her and can't see my sweet toddler/preschooler. Now she's a big girl and the way she speaks and carries herself is so different than it was just a few days before. I cannot talk to her like she is a baby anymore or try to explain things that I don't think she is capable of understand because it is already "I know Mommy, you don't have to tell me."
I did what I hoped that I wouldn't do - I cried, not just on the first day, but throughout the week when I would think about her being in school. I went to drop her off at her first day, fully expecting to walk her to her classroom and grateful, at the time, that she wanted to be a big girl and walk in by herself. As I watched her walking into the building, looking like a walking backpack because it was so large, I began to cry. While I was sitting at my desk working, I started thinking about her, wondering if she found her way to the right classroom, wondering if she got lost and was left standing in the hallway crying. So, I packed up my purse, got in the car and headed off to the school, trying to think of an excuse to be there. By the time I got there and went into the school office, I realized how obvious it was going to be as to why I was really there and managed to calm myself down enough to not request to see her. I tell my husband this story and he turns to my with a grin on his face and says, "you just need to let go." He's right, just a little.