A Cat and His Girl

First Grade Mommy Blues

So after a long hiatus, I'm trying to get back into posting more regularly here. I'm afraid that I'm not much good at keeping up this sort of thing, as I know only too well from all my aborted attempts at diary-keeping over the years. Still, I live in hope!

Elizabeth is now in first grade, which seems shocking. Why "shocking" I do not exactly know, as she obviously completed kindergarten last year and first grade is, of course, the next logical step. Being her mother and being me, I tend to worry about her future. A lot. Not because she struggles; academically she's outstanding, behaviorally she's great, and socially she's doing O.K. as well (though she still is very reluctant to talk to many adults). Maybe it's just my book review job that requires me to read, from time to time, books about girls with vicious eating disorders, girls who are abused by perverts or bad boyfriends, girls who somehow fall into a rabbit hole of pain. How do those things happen? How do you keep them from happening to your child? How do you keep her, above all, safe?

I know the answer. You don't, of course. At least, you can't protect her from everything out there. So far, we haven't had to worry about the mean girls, the unfair teacher, the school bully, or worse. But at least some of that is probably headed our way. Not to mention all the normal ins and outs, ups and downs of a mother-daughter relationship. And then at some point in the all-too-near future, she will leave us, and what if I can't handle that?

What I keep trying to tell myself is to live more in the now and less in the "what if" future. If only "now" didn't become the past at such lightning speed!