On my last night in "jail" (Part 2: The Meat)

Tomorrow is a day I've been looking forward to revering dreading thinking about for five long years.

Anna starts kindergarten at 7:45 tomorrow morning.

Ever since I found out I was being laid off from my job four days before I was to return from my 7-month personal leave after Charley died, I've been thinking of this day. Using it as my measuring stick and benchmark for many things:

I'll stay home with Anna until she starts kindergarten.

I can go back to work guilt-free when Anna starts school.

I can have my life back once Anna starts elementary school. 

Kindergarten = Get Out of Jail Free card.

And now the day is here.

The truth is that I had a hard time starting to write this post. (I even had to write a whole bunch of other trivial stuff about kindergarten, just to avoid the topic as long as possible.)

I've been looking forward to this moment all summer...and for a lot longer. It marks the start of a new chapter--one where I'm not the constant center of Anna's every moment, where I'll be going back to work, when I'll have a measure of energy be freed five days every week and be open for new adventures. I'm really excited about some of the possibilities, and other days I'm weary at the thought of all that has to happen (and soon).

But now that the vaunted day--the end of my self-imposed prison sentence--is actually here, I'm not exactly sure what I feel tonight.

I noticed I had some butterflies in my stomach earlier this morning and then this evening. I don't know exactly what those were about, but now that I stop to try to think, write something about this milestone, a part of me could curl up and cry.

How can I know how much it is simply what I'd feel on the night before my baby girl officially becomes A Big Girl, regardless of Charley dying? What would be "normal" for me, even without her father being dead and missing all of this?

I have no idea anymore. And up until a few minutes ago, I wouldn't have said that her dead father was having much of any influence over my feelings as Anna starts school. But....

I know it's one of those days that gets many widowed people wobbly. Michelle D. and Irene both wrote about it last week, and Jackie this week too. I'm hoping that I'll be distracted and excited during the flurry of activity in the morning, but I'm doing my best to not have any expectations at all. Crying as I leave her tomorrow? Dancing my way back home and throwing a mini me-party? Crawling back into bed for two hours because I might not sleep at all tonight? We'll see.

And by no means am I saying that staying home with Anna these past five years was a mistake or that I regret it. I use jail and prison sentence very facetiously. I loved getting to spend the time with her--it was something I wanted to do before I ever had children, and something I couldn't do when Charley was alive--but it was also a helluva lot harder than I ever would have thought 4 1/2 years ago. I love that I know that child inside and out and that I'm more myself with her than I ever was with her father, or with anyone else. I love her more than the moon, stars, coffee, wine, and brownies (and even my camera, laptop, and iPhone) all put together. If it's possible, I love her even more than I did her father. But staying home with her added such a murky, complicated aspect to my life--and the grief--over the past five years, too. And now that the "old" normal--everything that I've been used to since Charley died--is ending, it's hard to classify or understand it all. I loved it, but it was also the hardest thing I've ever had to do*.

(* Except for having to say goodbye to Charley at the funeral home, and selling and moving out of our marital dream home. But staying home with her was number three on the list.)

Final answer: I still don't know what I'm feeling. I'm tired, I'm excited. I'm looking forward to this new transition in our lives, but I'm also thinking about what tonight and tomorrow might have looked like with Charley alive--more than I've thought about it in a long while. I'm reminding myself that this year probably won't be all that different from preschool this past year, except for adding two more days (and starting even earlier...and me going back to work as soon as I can find something). I'm shaking my head at myself and telling myself to stop overthinking and go to bed.

But one more thing definitely has to change this year, along with this big new school thing in our life: I have to start going to bed like a normal person. I can't keep staying up til the ass-crack of dawn every night, like I have for the last five years.

Which means it's time to stop writing, set up and program my coffee pot, make sure my camera is all ready to go for the morning, and set my alarm for 6:20 am.

Gulp....