The Dreaded Drop-off

Keep it together. Keep it together. Keep it together.

Go make friends with the kid crying behind the door. He doesn’t want to be here either.

Have you noticed anything about his speech? Because I was going to make a referral.

No, thanks, he’s been in speech therapy for over a year.

Oh, okay, so you are aware—

I lose whatever else his teacher tries telling me while my son’s tears soak my shoulder. Other kiddos trot happily into the classroom, already engrossed in play before their parents wave casually from the doorway. Mine clings so tightly to my neck that you’d think I was sending him to war, not preschool for two mornings a week.

Then, like every other mom around the world tearing themselves from the white-knuckled clutches of their desperate children, I hold it together until I get to the car, cry the whole way home, and try to convince myself—for the tenth or hundredth time—that it’s worth it, that I’m not selfish, and that this is good for him, while questioning every life choice that led to the dreaded drop off…

How are we going to get through this?

My own childhood memories are consumed by fear and longing, the fragility and insecurity of a terrified kid who never knew when her mother was coming home and was always, always looking for her. Sometimes she was just at work. Other times…

Feeling unsafe and afraid—being unsafe some of the time—was my story. Now drop-offs are triggering the deep-seeded trauma of the times in my life when I was somewhere I didn’t want to be with people I didn’t want to be with. My son’s story is different, but the fear and anxiety he experiences when he’s left at preschool—a place he doesn’t want to be with people he doesn’t want to be with—is the same. Is sending him to school so young, even for a short time, doing more harm than good? Or is this yet another example of how the horrors of my own past shadow the present?

Meanwhile, Mom guilt hits me like a giant yellow bus. As a SAHM, preschool is supposed to be a gift. It feels more like optional torture. I’m trying to be rational. I remind myself every day that my story is not his…that I’m not her. And while his grief over being separated from me is real, it comes from a place of security and trust and love rather than uncertainty and fear that I’ll never come back.

In my head I know all of this. My heart needs some time to catch up.

In the meantime it’s so goddamn hard to let go.