Since Kaia was very little, I could tell she was very nurturing. She’s always shown care and concern for others. When she was just over two years old, there was a new little girl in her 2s class at daycare. This girl was terrified and scared of everyone, actively avoiding interaction with anyone. But Kaia managed to take this kid under her wing and make her feel welcome, doing activities with her and making her feel included. Kaia’s vocabulary was quite limited, then; she never told me what she did. She simply mentioned the name of her new friend in class. I found out via this girl’s mom when we ran into each other at pickup. The mom shared that her daughter kept mentioning Kaia’s name and how much she liked her. In the mornings, drop offs became less painful because she said she was going to see Kaia again, and that made her excited for the day at school.

Kaia is now the youngest kid in her kindergarten class. She doesn’t get much interaction time with the 2s, 3s, or 4s classes at this school. So I suppose her only time to “take care” of others is with her “siblings” at home. She claimed my work chair the other day, insisting I couldn’t use it for work anymore because she needed it to push all her little brothers and sisters around. Then tonight when I tucked her in for bed, she gave me a disapproving look and said, “I also need to tuck Irene and Maddie and Flora and (keep naming the 10 other “siblings”) so that they are super comfy, too, Mama!” So we gave each of these siblings a little spot on the bed beside her, tucked each of them in together, and then I kissed her good night.

This doesn’t sound like a truly significant moment, does it? It sounds like an everyday thing with a child of Kaia’s age. But that’s the thing, though: the things that are seemingly everyday to us now will eventually fade from the front of our minds to the back of our minds…. into a distant memory, and then potentially be long forgotten. And then we’ll move on to the next thing that will occupy our minds and follow the same process of disappearance. So I thought about this as I closed her door to a crack and thought to myself: this is such a beautiful little moment of my little kindergartener, wanting to care for and nurture her “little siblings,” also known as her endless collection of stuffies. And I should write it down now so that in the event that I do forget, when this becomes the past, that I can always look back to this and remember.