First Day

Chicken,

Yesterday you started your first day of real school. You slept at Mummy’s and we tried to eat a big breakfast that morning. Then I brought you to Daddy’s to get you dressed and ready. We took some pictures of you in your new school uniform, and then we walked over together.

I have to admit that even though you were your confident self, I have struggled with the idea of you beginning school in a system I’m unfamiliar with, in a country of which I’ve only scratched the surface. Lately, too, it’s started to sink in, what it means to be a full-time working mother. I won’t be able to provide that secure framework around these uncertain hours (thankfully Daddy is able to do this still), which makes it all the harder to try and ascertain your experiences there.

When I first got your acceptance letter a few months ago (in a text, from Daddy), I was at work, and I sobbed silently at my desk with my face inside my jumper for a good ten minutes. I’m still coming to terms with the notion of letting you go that little bit more, which of course started the minute I told you that one day soon you would have two houses. You adapted to this change far better than the rest of us, and when we left you at the discovery table inside your little classroom on your first day of school, you said “Bye, Mummy!” and smiled brightly and waved your arm.

And when we stepped into the schoolyard three hours later, you marched out the door, saw us, and ran to us, giggling. You lifted your arms and I scooped you up. You wrapped yourself around me and pressed your face into my neck and sighed like you did when you were just a baby. I clutched the fat of your thighs, covered in the thick material of your alien school shorts, and carried you all the way back home.

It may not ever be possible to breach or fully comprehend the world you are effortlessly a part of here in England, but our language is bone-deep, and the means through which we will always find one another.

I love you my tiny boy, and I’m so proud of you.

All my love,

Mummy