goodbye Ani & Siri.

Last Friday, I said goodbye to Ani and Siri. I knew I was sad to leave them behind in Toronto as I headed to the airport but I didn't know that my voice would crack after I gave them one last kiss and a hug and that once inside the cab, a few tears would fall.

Somehow, with each new childcare job, I always feel like I could be doing better - I ask my employers too many questions, I don't always remember to wash the kids' hands when we return from the park, I don't let Ani paint if Siri is awake because Siri will try to eat the paint or cry if I keep her away from it.

But with each job's ending, with each goodbye, with each thank you letter, all of those doubts and feelings of inadequacy get washed away. I don't know why I'm so hard on myself throughout the job when each time I've had to leave my kid or kids behind, I get overwhelming affirmations from their parents. What I thought was a year of working was also a year of becoming part of another family, of growing more space in my heart for two little girls, of creating a friendship with a woman who taught me a lot not only about childcare but about other aspects of life too.

While I will still maintain small babysitting jobs for the next nine months, nannying is a chapter of my life that I am pretty sure is over. Stepping foot into the classroom for the first time in a couple of weeks will mark a whole new chapter that I barely know how to anticipate. Student-teaching will bring a lot of struggle, a lot of questions, and a lot of learning, but I am overwhelmingly excited to get in there and start seeing what it really means to be a teacher. As I look back on all the families that I've said goodbye to, all the children who still hold a special place in my heart, it only makes me more excited to know that soon, at the beginning of every September, I'll have to make place in my heart for ten or twenty children at a time!