A Last Goobye

I have to be honest here, I am having a very rough day. You see, this is London's last day of preschool. And every day when I dropped him off he would give me a hug and a kiss and then go wave to me out this window. I mean every day. No friend or teacher ever prevented this ritual of ours. There will be other rituals, sure, but it doesn't make the loss of this one—the sudden and blinding realization of the loss of this one thing that meant more to me than I can express—any less poignant. Okay, that was bad, but there's more.

 Today London got up and painted his body to resemble a Kyoshi warrior. This is how he left this morning, full of life and excited to see his friends. 

But as the day progressed his heart began to break (he drew me a picture of it so there is simply no doubt) as he realized that this was it, that he wasn't coming back to this school, to these friends, to this life he has known for so long.  Notice the pensive gaze in the picture at right.

This is part of life for both myself and London. I get that. But it hurts to see him hurting. My heart aches to see him in a general sadness that he simply cannot express. 

But then we went swimming and had ice cream and, though that didn't fix everything, it does give us that requisite happy ending that is supposed to end all blog posts.