Starting Kindergarten Twin Style

There is something different about sending twins, or any set of multiples, for that matter, off to kindergarten. I have a boy and a girl that are twins. What a pile of mixed emotions on this first day! I was proud. Happy. Sad. Worried. We lived through long Covid mandates in the Bay Area, so our preschool years got to put it mildly, INTERUPTED. One day my kids were in preschool, and then for 1.5 years, they were home. There must be a name for this group of children in early childhood that were disrupted from critical social interaction and development.

Anyway, in the days leading up to kindergarten as I Sharpie-d lunchboxes, backpacks and piles of school supplies, I felt sad. I loved our barefoot-in-the-backyard afternoons while the big kids were at school. But then I also thought about how a more structured day would be good for our twins AND me. How would they do being in separate classrooms all day?

So here we are, the first day of kindergarten. I walked my daughter into her kindergarten classroom. She had the same teacher and same room as her older sister who is now in MIDDLE SCHOOL. The tears threatened to flow before I could say goodbye and a knot in my chest twisted. I was just here in this very classroom with my eldest daughter. Six years went by that fast?!

I don’t remember crying as much when my other kids started kindergarten. It took so much to grow our little twins. They were so tiny when they came home from the NICU and I could just see them so small in my mind, like behind my eyes. Do you have that spot in your head? And then other things you can’t remember at all?

Anyway, I scooted out of my daughter’s classroom as the teacher sweetly ushered us clingy mamas out. The dads had already 86’d themselves. I looked around at the other moms in the bright hallway, most for whom this was their first kindergarten send off. Some had tears in their eyes too- mine were flowing. I felt a little sheepish, wiping tears away. “I didn’t know it would be this hard,” one mom sniffed. “I know,” I said.

And then I clattered down the hallway in my wedges to get a glimpse of her twin brother, because my twin mamas know you are ALWAYS toggling between two.

One of my favorite mentors told me the hardest part of motherhood is LETTING GO. And it’s a process of embracing the moment or season you’re in, and then letting go, over and over. Most of the time it is so fun and freeing to let them go- like we are DONE with waking up for teething! Or you don’t need me to brush your teeth ever again! Ok, um, maybe I still need to get in there and brush sometimes. But sometimes it’s hard. The LETTING GO part.

I know my twins are in good hands with their sweet teachers. But excuse us while we take a moment and reel through the last 5 or 6 years that got us here. It took a lot of loving hands, didn’t it? And feeding, changing, comforting more than one child is something to be proud of. They did just start their school career. 13 years to go, baby!