Sunday, I left Sweet Pea in the Church* Nursery for the First time. In fact, it's the first time I've left him for more than 15 minutes with someone other than my mother. (And those 15 minutes were with his godparents).
And, I've gone a few times to the Church Nursery with him, in hopes that he'd soon be ready to be left. The plan was, eventually, he'd be comfortable and happy being left there, so that I could feel comfortable in his ability to leave him at school when the time came.
But, Sunday, when we went there were more children than usual and the room felt brighter and happier. And Sweet Pea went quite willingly into the arms of the nice nursery worker in the Hijab. She immediately grabbed his attention, so when I went to set down the diaper bag he didn't notice. And since the door was right there, I slipped out to see if he'd start screaming, but he was playing with the woman in the hijab, happy as a clam.
And I realized he was ready to be left.
And my eyes filled with tears as I signed the book and grabbed the pager that would buzz if he fussed and needed me.
And I didn't know what to do with myself. I hadn't planned to leave him there. I had planned to end up in the quiet room with him in my lap as I watched the service.
In fact, I started the service in the quiet room- confident that any second that pager would start buzzing and I'd have to run save my little man. But, then a family with a smaller baby came in and I gave up my glider for the other mother. I wanted to bond over our shared experience bringing a baby to church, but I didn't have so much as a diaper bag to prove that I, too, have a baby I bring to the quiet room.
So instead I slipped into the back row of the sanctuary. Mentally, calculating the seconds it would take to respond when that pager started buzzing.
But, it didn't buzz.
After the sermon, I couldn't take it anymore and I left to the hover outside the nursery. To my surprise, my baby wasn't in the midst of a crying fit and hyperventilating. He was actually, sitting happily on the lap of one of the nursery workers reading a book.
And once again my eyes welled with tears as I went to watch the last of the music from the monitor in the fellowship hall- and hit the restroom before I went back to pick up my little man.
When I did, I found him in different onesie than I'd dropped him off in (apparently his diaper had leaked), he was being fed the food pouch I had in the diaper bag for lunch because I hadn't packed a bottle (I planned to nurse) and he was hungry and I was informed that he had a small fall, but he was fine- no bruise, no scratch.
I was an emotional wreck, but my little man was FINE without me.
I'm sure it won't be the last time that happens as he grows into his own person. In a way, nursing him has been a crutch to each the separation of him from being a part of my body to being his own person. And I can tell, it's going to make me a weepy mess to wean him when we're ready for that.
As his child dedication approaches, I'm borrowing inspiration from a poem by Kahlil Gibran ( http://www.katsandogz.com/onchildren.html ) in which parents are merely the bows and children are the arrows. It's a fitting metaphor, I think, as I send Sweet Pea out into the world, and he gets further and further apart from me. It's as it should be, and the archer (being God, the Universe, Fate, Life, Love or whatever floats your particular boat). And leaving my little man in the nursery, was just one of the first steps in releasing my arrow. And it left me far more emotional and off kilter than I had expected.
My father cried at all the big events in my life before he died- my brother's high school graduation, my ordination as Deacon in our PCUSA church, my high school graduation... and in the absence of my father, I cried in his place at my brother's wedding, my college graduation, my law school graduation, etc. And now, I feel like I'm going to be just like him- only more so- getting weepy at even the little events in Sweet Pea's life.
But, thus is parenthood, I suppose.
*I call it a Church, but UU "churches" are really congregations, not churches, I just haven't fully adopted the new nomenclature that came with my new religions affiliation.