Since everyone keeps asking me: Kindergarten is going well. There have been no more reports of bullying from my daughter and so I’m hoping we’re in the clear. Everything seems to be going smoothly.
I have noticed that I feel more connected to my daughter now that she is going to school. Sounds weird, but her behavior at home had been pushing me further and further away from that whole mother-daughter bond that I keep reading about. Frankly, I wasn’t feeling very bonded. Terrorized, yes. Bonded, not really. But now that Caylie is out there interacting with society (in as much as Kindergarten in a small local school is a society), I am feeling a sense of communion with her. I’ve never denied that the two of us share some major personality traits. And I’ve learned that if I were to ever meet a clone of myself, we would not get along. I can, however, relate to my daughter more now that she’s out there in the world.
I am a sensitive soul. I cry easily. I take things personally when I oftentimes shouldn’t. My heart can feel like it’s breaking just from reading a poem, hearing a song or looking at a painting or photograph. I just feel deeply about anything and everything. And it’s wonderful, beautiful, exhausting and leaves me feeling vulnerable in a world that dissects a person’s every action and thought and puts it up on a big screen to analyze. Caylie inherited my sensitive soul and I feel for her as she takes her first steps out into a harsh world. I’ve been having flashbacks to when I was in school: like the time in English class when the teacher read Anne Sexton’s poem Double Image and I sobbed at my desk and couldn’t understand how anyone couldn’t feel completely destroyed by the fact that Anne was forced to make moccasins and hated herself. I wonder which things are going to make Caylie sob at her desk or just bring tears to her eyes.
It’s not easy being sensitive. I want to be able to teach her to protect her heart, but I’m almost 38 and I still haven’t learned how to completely protect myself from the things in our world that get to me. I still take things too personally. I still cry when I hear good songs and watch sad movies. (I didn’t even make it through the first stanza of Sexton’s poem before my throat closed up.) I can’t even think about the end of The Notebook without getting tears in my eyes. I hope Caylie talks to me about the things that are breaking her heart, the things that get to her most deeply. The beautiful things and the ugly things.
We can cry about them together.
Mainely Sane 