Life has been so ordinary this week – no national awards offered, no holidays taken, no evenings to myself (which is part of why this week’s blog is next week… or perhaps more accurately last week’s blog is this week?)
Yet a rather terrifying moment hit me mid-week: I am into my final half term of primary education.
Obviously, not my primary education: I finished that a few more years ago than I care to admit. I cannot claim to be a child prodigy!
No, this final half term I am experiencing vicariously through my daughter. From September my baby (!) will be in secondary education, and I will have an extra half hour each afternoon before I can expect her home. Also, I’ll have to get her out of the door half an hour earlier which, judging by this morning’s tardiness, is going to be no mean feat.
I feel quite differently about her progression than about my son’s two years ago. With him, the process was completely new, which meant a huge learning curve, though I had no great worries about him settling in when September came. The secondary school has a day in July when all the Year 6 children go for a day to orientate themselves a little. This brought one of my most heart-wrenching memories, as I watched my little boy (yeah, 11 years old) trudge off in the mizzly rain for the day. Despite it being the children’s chance to learn the route and time their journey, all his friends were taken in the car by their parents. Bad mother?
For my daughter, the transition is no longer new, but I have many more worries about her settling in. Having said that, I’m ready for her to go, having spent much of the last two years getting everything in place. There will be a final Sports Day (hooray! I’ve always hated these!), a final prom (we’ve already got the dress – it was our most important shopping trip of the half term holidays, at least as far as my daughter was concerned) and a leavers’ assembly. At this point, I know I shall blub as my baby and her friends leave her excellent primary school. But that’s a mother’s prerogative, right?
Six weeks and counting. How does time fly so fast? It seems only yesterday that I carried her as a baby to Zambia, to live in a strange country where I feared I might not find bottled milk to feed her. Now she is fighting to grow taller than me. How times change.