September 4, 2008
HELLO. WORLD.
The first day of school here in the great northeast happens after Labor Day. We stretched summer out until it was dangerous, ran home, and got ready.
E., E. rocked his first day of Kindergarten. He smiled all the way to school, lined up, had a moment of panic right before he walked into the building, and then went in without another backward glance. When he came out he was still smiling and declared that his first day was "GREAT!"
Not that I would know. It wasn't only E.'s first day. It was Z.'s first day of preschool too. While K. was searching for E.'s teacher, I was trying to convince Z. to remove herself from my leg and stand up and say hi to her teacher, the teacher's helper, anyone. Finally she did. And after that things got sticky. She had to walk into the school by herself which I knew was impossible. Her sweet, sweet speech therapist came over, picked her up, and carried her in. Screaming and crying. Yelling "Mama! MAMA!!!"
I paced around the house. What else to do? We did some errands and got to the school too early to pick her up. Stalled in the car. And finally, finally it was time to mosey over to the door. My moseying looked a lot like sprinting, but with frowny worry lines.
When we got there we stalled some more, as we were still quite early. K. said, "The social worker just went by."
"Which way?" I asked, gesturing to the left and right.
"She came out of the preschool room, looked out the window, and went right back in," and then joking, "They were probably looking for us. Ready to send Z. home."
Except it wasn't a joke.
At that point one of the parents who was peering in a small window looked at us and said, "She's crying. She's been crying." I had been trying not to peer in the window, and suddenly I was there, peering. I got a glimpse of my girl crying furiously and walking towards the door. A moment later a very teary Z. was in my arms.
We didn't expect it to be easy, and it wasn't. I handed her a Winnie the Pooh balloon, gave her a huge hug and let her relax into sobs on my shoulder. I managed not to cry until we got into the car. I'm pretty proud of that actually.
