School Days Over or maybe not so fast.

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There are no more buses stopping at my driveway. Or for that matter trains or cars transporting anyone from my home off to school. 

Buses just like this
 picked my children up.

Up until last year, since 1987, my husband and I have had at least one if not all of our four children in school. All different kinds and ways of schooling. Nursery school, public school, private school, home-schooled, community college, private college, state universities, and graduate schools. Some times it has been a rough ride and others, smoother than anticipated.  

When not walking, this is where Clementine hangs out.

So this fall, as I walk Clementine, and see the school bus drivers practicing their routes, I am transported back to those days. 

Bittersweet. 

The kindergarten bus stopping for my eldest child, watching him climb up those steps, almost too far apart for him to manage, while his three younger siblings watched in awe. 

I watched in awe too. That he was going, that I was watching him go and that it was the beginning of the many times I would watch all of them "go" one way or another.

What I know now, which I did not know then, was that while they were the ones heading off to learn new and sometimes very unhelpful things, I was the one really learning. 

I was/am learning that if one does this parenting job well, these individuals we give birth to, love, teach, provide for, and guide, will not need us, but will want us.