I remember everything about that morning. The breakfast, the getting dressed in the tiny navy shorts and uniform polo, tying his shoes, packing his favorite lunch foods in the Blue’s Clue’s lunchbox. I remember the sad drive there, and thinking silently in my head, “Is he going to be ok there all day? What if he just wants to come home? His teacher doesn’t know any of his likes and dislikes! What if he cries?”

That was 13 years ago, on my oldest son’s first day of kindergarten. I was nervous, hesitant, excited, yet leery. I was holding his hand, my three year old’s hand, and squeezing my swollen pregnant belly through the classroom door. I was having that surreal moment that every mom has on their first child’s first day of school. I said with disbelief out loud, “How did this happen so fast?” Another mom overheard me. She too had a son starting kindergarten, but also had older children in school. Together, we watched the five year old miniature soldiers march into the classroom, and I said it again, “I can’t believe how fast that went. He was just born.” She shook her head and raised her eyebrows, smiled, then sighed, ready to impart some been there done that wisdom on this first time school mom.

“If you think that was fast, now that they are in school, you won’t believe how fast time goes by now.”

I will never forget that moment, or how that simple sentence has lived up to its magnitude tenfold. It’s as if the second they cross the threshold into school, childhood shifts into warp speed. I have since spoken it myself to other first time school moms. And every fall, on the first day of every school year, I still shake my head now in disbelief, then sigh and wonder how this happened. How does time fly by like that, all at once passing sometimes painfully slow and then passing painfully fast? Where was all that time that spanned and then magically transported our children faster and faster into adulthood? How did we spend those school years?

We spent it making pancakes and wiping counters, folding pajamas and cleaning skinned knees. We spent it making Halloween costumes and hiding Easter eggs, watching endless baseball innings, soccer games, and five hour rounds of youth golf. We spent it glueing shoebox projects, signing permission slips, and changing soiled bed sheets. We spent it packing sleepover bags, athletic equipment bags, and lunch bags. And we spent it yearning for the school year to just hurry up and end, because we were exhausted and eager for summer break, only to find ourselves three months later, totally exhausted, and yearning for the school year to hurry up and start again.

This fall my little boy, who I hesitantly dropped off at kindergarten 13 years ago, will start his señor year of high school. It will be his last “first” day of school. He will get in his car, and together with that three year old (now 15) they will drive off to high school. They will leave at 7 a.m., and return 12 hours later after classes and sports. I like to think of it as warp speed weaning in a sense, because for now they are out of my reach 12 hours day, but a year from now, that little boy will be away at college, and then out of my reach for weeks, maybe months at a time. Ouch.

I will help out at the elementary school’s annual “Boo-Hoo Breakfast” for kindergarten moms that is held on the first day of school. I will pour hot coffee and serve blueberry muffins to nervous new school moms, and I will watch them shake their head in disbelief, and mumble to themselves, “How did this happen?” I will hang back in the shadows, and at one point I will find myself talking to an older mom, whose child just graduated college and started his very first job. I will lament that my teenagers are driving me crazy, and I cannot imagine my 17 year old, who most mornings can’t find his backpack, actually being a college graduate and joining the ranks of society as an adult. She will shake her head and raise her brows, smile, sigh, and say, “If you think high school went by fast, the college years pass by faster than you can say keg party. Just. You. Wait.” I am genuinely frightened at how right she may be.