Friday was our last day at the pre-school we’ve been attending for five years. No, our child hasn’t failed pre-school four years running. This school provide pre-K from 3-5 and Kindergarten for 6 yr olds. Both of our children have been at this school.

There are other families in the same boat and I see them at the little concerts and plays. They watch their children with a camera and compare the same production to the previous four. There are four of us families, no, five, and our children have grown up together. And Friday was the very last day we will go to this school.

I picked this school one day, which I remember vividly, when my daughter was two. We were looking at options because I was going to drive her to Canada and drop her off to live with a flock of geese and she was going to write terrible poetry about me to her therapist in a few years if we didn’t find a solution to our “situation.”

That “situation” was that I thought I could do the whole “stay at home” good mom thing and turns out, at six months pregnant with my second, I was deep in to “no way in hellfire.” It turns out I probably could have stuck it out and managed somewhat (as this video proved) but I had already reached out to this preschool on that dreadful day of desperation.

I won’t tell you the details of the tens of schools we visited, but I will tell you that this one school we went, set in a small farm house, was “the one.” They always say you’ll just know and we both knew. The teacher was my savior that day. The school was a perfect fit. The acre of outdoor play would possibly fulfill my daughter’s energy requirements after living in our tiny condo.

It fit us all. And it fit other families a lot like us. So we’ve made friends at this school, invited other friends to join the school, visited at every mother-living-hour-long concert/production (with video!). My children have best friends from this school and I do as well. In a small, but significant way, this school really did save us. It gave me hope on that one hopeless day in the trenches of a two year old with a pregnant belly. It continued to nurture our family as the children grew in to actual people. And then, Friday, we said good-bye.

I think I’m more choked up about this then the fact my youngest is about to start Kindergarten at public school next week.

No, wait. That kills me, too.