Taking Scout to kindergarten this morning. We've gotta be in room 113 at 8:55 to meet Miss Mahoney. (Details changed to indulge the paranoid.) I'm not going to talk here about how I'm feeling. But this passage from an unpublished memoir about my mother and my sister Piper does spring to mind.

It must have been that Jeep
in which Mom famously drove Pie to the first day of kindergarten. For several
weeks ahead of time, she’d been preparing Pie for this traumatic day. She had
developed a simple plan. Here's how it would work: At the entrance to the school, Mom would kiss the palm of Pie's little hand and Pie would close it and the kiss would stay in there, Mom explained, even if she forgot to keep her hand closed during the day.

The plan worked perfectly. Pie received her kiss, closed her hand, and trotted happily off to school. Mom got back in the car and headed home.

But she had to pull off the road, she was sobbing so violently.