My lonely-only child's first day of kindergarten was full of trepidation, angst and separation anxiety - and that was just me. My daughter, on the other hand, was excited, open and ready for adventure.

As I walked her down that ominously long hallway, it wouldn't have surprised me to have heard someone yell "dead man walking!" That's what it felt like. Death, not of a person, but of an era. The end of having my daughter at home with me, filling my days with caring for her, enjoying her company and making memories. Leaving her there in that place with hundreds of strangers and strings of endless, cold hallways was terrifying.

In a flash, we were standing in my child's new classroom, her new daytime home, with me gripping her hand like I was keeping her from falling down a deep crevice. She tugged on it and said, "Mommy, it's time for you to go." Little smarty pants. No. No! "Okay, Honey, you have fun", I relented, faking a brave smile.

With that I was back in that long hallway, tears streaming down my face, trying not to burst out weeping until I was out of earshot, when a woman with an older child spotted me and pulled me into a bear hug, telling me that I would survive this momentous day and would even come to appreciate my daughter being in school.

I was appalled, incensed, in denial, until around mid-day when the peace in the house grasped me and the realization that I had a whole day to myself sunk in. I could work on projects uninterrupted, clean the house slowly, read a book! Reading, that pastime I'd lost the day she was born. I came to relish this freedom, this respite from constant care. I still didn't really like dropping her off at school, but her excitement at being there reassured me. Somewhere between Mommy and Me and kindergarten, she'd became a social butterfly.

The next year, when I was walking away from dropping my daughter off at her new first grade classroom, I saw a woman walking down the hallway, lost, devastated and sobbing. I took her in my arms and wrapped her in a bear hug. I repeated the words that had been said to me a year earlier and saw that same disbelief I had felt on this anxious mother's face and I smiled inside. I knew that by noon she'd be sitting in a quiet house thinking, this isn't so bad, and that by the end of the week, new, more relaxed routines would have been established.

I wiped her tears and sent her on her way, then went home to reclaim the peace a summer with a child at home had shattered. This wasn't to say I didn't miss her when she wasn't there. I did. I enjoyed my days, though, and think I was a better mother for the time I spent relaxing and then preparing her snack for when she returned home. I had more patience, more of me to give to her. You couldn't have convinced me of that on that first day of kindergarten, though.

So for every mother of a small child, know that first days come and go. Your child will find more peace when you do and it when those first-day tears do fall, wipe them away and keep reminding yourself and this too shall pass.

Learn more about this author, Kelly Robinson.
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