“There she goes.” The exact words I thought to myself one morning a few months ago as I left my oldest daughter at the bus stop for the first time. I sat there and watched her like a momma bear until another child showed up to stand with her, and I watched the clock until I knew I had to leave for work. You see, my first baby is growing up, but my heart isn’t quite ready for that yet.
She had come home on the school bus a few afternoons with someone home to meet her, but that morning was the first day that I left my sweet girl at the bus stop and drove off leaving her to navigate her way. That was a big week in our house. She got her very own house key and picked out her own lanyard to keep it on. And as my heart kind of broke a little bit at the realization that I would no longer be picking her up from school, she quickly brought me back to laughter when her first question was, “Does this mean I’m old enough for a cell phone?”.
If you had told me eight years ago that I would cry halfway to work the first morning that she rode the school bus, I probably would have laughed. Who would have thought that something as simple as that big yellow bus could rock my world? But it absolutely did. As I watched her at the bus stop in the rearview mirror, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the bus approaching to pick her up. I watched her bravely meeting new kids at the bus stop before I made my way to work, and my heart swelled. She’s growing up. She’s becoming independent and she is oh, so brave.
My heart was broken because I felt like she needed me a little less that morning. But the truth is, she will always need her momma, just in different ways. That morning, she needed me to believe in her and trust her. When she got home that afternoon, her self-confidence had soared. She did it. She navigated new waters and she was proud of herself. I was proud of her.
That day, my first baby got her very own house key. That morning, the precious soul that made me a momma stood at a bus stop making new friends. My daughter, my life, walked onto a school bus by herself and never looked back. On that March morning, my girl, full of intense bravery, was my hero.
It’s been a few months since that morning I sat tearing up at the bus stop, and now school is out and she will be a third grader before I know it. It seems that every day I can see her growing and maturing, and I feel like a ball of mixed emotions. I tearfully miss her baby days, but I also excitedly await seeing where life will take her. Something about that school bus jolted my momma heart. She’s gaining independence.
It’s funny how these tiny things feel so huge in this journey called motherhood. School buses and house keys made for lots and lots of tears that day, but I could not be more proud of this little warrior I’m raising.
“My heart was broken because I felt like she needed me a little less that morning. But the truth is, she will always need her momma, just in different ways. That morning, she needed me to believe in her and trust her.”
Oh how that soothed my heart this morning as I watch my own little one growing. I never thought of it that way and so needed to read that this morning!
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