Tonight, just after I laid you in your crib and watched your eyelids slowly fall as you snuggled up to your woobie, I went downstairs to start collecting things for your big day tomorrow. I wrote your name on your shirt tag, your sippy cup, your favorite blanket. I carefully folded your clothes, and as I placed the last sweater on the stack, I wondered for a moment if it smelled like me. I unfolded it and raised it to my face, breathing in deeply. It smelled like nothing. Maybe to someone else, it would smell like our house, or like me, or like you. But to me it smelled blank; meaningless. All at once I started to sob, and this shocked me because before now, I had completely held my crap together about all this. But not tonight. Not now, as I top off this huge sac of everything-you-could-possibly-want-and-more for tomorrow: your first day of daycare.
For weeks, I have carefully researched and interviewed to find you the most ideal place. The place I feel you’d be the most happy, and somehow I feel only I can know this. And I found a great place for you, right near my office, where you can play and sing songs and create your first little friendships in life. Ms. Mariala is kind and sweet. She knows how to make your bottles and change your diaper. She knows lots of games and rhymes and is probably better-equipped to save you from a choking attack than I am. She sings songs too, but not as good as your mama, and I’m certain you will notice this. The thing is, though... she doesn’t know how you like to be held before your morning nap, with your head on my arm and your blanket over only half of your face. She doesn’t know that when you’re really sleepy and you hold your hand up in the air and close your eyes, what you’re asking for is the palm of your hand and your forearm to be caressed. And she doesn’t know just the right way to tickle your ear and the back of your head that makes you finally nod off to sleep. She doesn’t know these things.
But you know what? You’re going to love her anyway. And you’re going to love being around kids your age. You’ll watch them closely and meanwhile get so excited that there’s someone your size rolling around on the ground, you’ll have no choice but to grin that perfect, crooked grin of yours and bounce up and down that one way. That’s exactly what you do when there are other babies in the room, and I guess, I suppose, I can’t think of anything else that gets you more excited than loving on other kids besides seeing your daddy walk in the door from work. So, see? It’s your second favorite thing, you’re going to be just fine. And besides, no one will be able to steal your favorite sippy cup because I just wrote your name on it, in permanent marker, on four different places, just in case the cup is turned just “so” on the shelf, hiding the fact that THIS IS CARTER’S CUP.
And, okay, I’ll even bet that your favorite blanket? Doesn’t smell at all like “nothing” to you.
