bye! i love you!

Every time Olen goes somewhere without me or vice-versa — which admittedly isn’t very often — I always say “bye Olen, I love you”. I don’t always get much back: sometimes nothing, sometimes “byeee!” or a wave, or often it’s just tears because he doesn’t ever want to be away from me. It’s always a little heart-twisting, saying “I love you” to someone and not hearing it back. Worse is having to leave with him crying as I say “Goodbye, I love you, and I will be back” and just go, ripping off the proverbial band-aid.

For months it feels like we’ve talked about saying goodbye and told goodbye stories and made goodbye routines and it’s improved only in amounts so miniscule they might only be measurable with fancy and expensive lab equipment. Like a nanoimprovement.

Olen starts “preschool” soon and I’m already feeling the anxiety like bees filling my chest. I’ve been unable to leave him at the child care center at the gym for more than 5.5 minutes, yet he spends entire days with his grandparents and after the goodbye he barely even mentions me. It’s a transition I know he’ll make eventually, but one that I hope is easy for him despite my worry that it’ll take a while for him to get to know his teachers and find comfort in a daily routine with them. The first days of school might be harder for me than for him, at least I hope that’s how it is.

This morning I had to work, so as we said goodbye for the day…

Me: “Bye Olen, love you.”

Him: “Byeee! AH-FOO!!!!” And he toddled off waving goodbye to the air in front of him.

Me, I barely whispered “Aww, ah foo too”, because I had melted there on the doorstep, almost dead from my heart being so completely over-full.

No matter how hard our morning goodbyes will be, at least we have this “I love you” part mostly figured out. Finally, an improvement.