Letting Go

Since she was about ten months old, Shreya has been going to Montessori school three days a week. It took her a couple of weeks to settle into a routine, but then , for a few months those three weekdays were very predictable. We would drop her off at her classroom, and the moment we handed her off to the teacher, she would start crying. Despite this, we would assure her that we would return for her in the afternoon, kiss her goodbye, and leave. By the time we had walked the fifty or so paces to the front of the building, to watch her on the closed circuit TV they have there, she would already have stopped crying and started playing and enjoying herself. When we returned to pick her up, she would often start fake crying as soon as she saw us, as if to pretend that she had been doing  so all day, even though we had just observed her happily engaged in activities seconds earlier. But the teachers, and independently, a friend who has seen Shreya there when she was dropping off or picking up her own child, told us that Shreya  has fun in our absence.

Today when we got to the classroom and the teacher, Miss Erica, held out her hands for Shreya, for the first time, she went  to her promptly and without protesting. She gave me the merest glance when I kissed her, and seemed already to be ready for her day. Leaving the place, I felt an inexplicable sense of loss. My baby is growing up!

Unfortunately, after that brave face, she actually had something of a rough day at school today, so perhaps tomorrow she will want to cling to us and beg not to be left at school again. And yet, something will have changed...