is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
He's a kindy kiddo now
Monday, September 13, 2010 I was up late writing a mama-love letter of sorts, working out metaphors about his beating heart and mine, when I noticed the time. It was well after midnight. The first day of kindergarten snuck up on me and I hadn't even made lunch yet.
The next morning came quickly and I heard the pat-pat-pat of Lil E's feet and stuffed babies dropping and being picked up in the hall outside my door and then the audible gasp as he leaned over my bed.
"Can I get up yet?!" He was smiling from ear to ear.
"Happy first day of kindergarten!" I whispered it. Who knew it was possible? He smiled even wider.
"Happy first day of kindergarten!" He said it back in a barely-contained whisper.
Elation -- that is the only word I can think of to describe this kid, leggier now and so tan and seeming so much older and more confident than he did months ago when the doors closed on preschool.
He was elated to see his lunchbox filled up and stuffed into his Millennium Falcon backpack. He was elated to get dressed on his own, even in the "non-comfy shorts" I forced him to wear on the photo-heavy first day. He was elated to brush his teeth. He was elated to make his bed and carefully place magnets on that and every other line of the GET UP AND GO! chart we made the night before from an idea ganked right from the bad kids and worn out, worse parents saved by Super Nanny (no judging).
He was elated to pull the Velcro straps tight on his new Captain Rex light-up Star Wars shoes.
He was elated to sneak a peek at the note I stuck in his lunch box, ones that this year, will be created so he can read them on his own. He was elated to fill his water bottle.
He was elated to take his breakfast dishes to the sink and pull on his hat and backpack and head out to the brave new world on the other side of the playground from pre-K.
We stood in the chaos of the playground, the bell rang, and for the first time, Lil E lined up to wait for his teacher. I looked down at him, already talking to a boy he didn't know, and I felt the tears creep up. I breathed deeply. In the center of the storm, he was still and smiling.
I got to walk him upstairs on that first day, and crowds of parents clung to kids who looked bewildered and those who looked ecstatic and those who were a little weepy and those who were rolling with it all much better than the adults. There were cameras of all kinds and lots of kisses and waving and happy wishes and stuffing supplies into waiting cardboard boxes and school bags into tiny cubbies.
In June, he told me he "wasn't quite comfortable with the idea of going to kindergarten yet" and asked if we could talk about it a little bit every day over the summer until he was. We didn't talk about it every day but enough. We read books, mapped out scenarios, weighed the pros and challenges of moving on from the classroom he loved so much for two years.
Seeing him there in the midst of so much, you wouldn't have known any nervousness had been there last spring and even lingered last night. Even if some anxiousness was still beating somewhere underneath that tiny polo shirt, that would be OK. That somehow this skinny, almost-six kid was just self-aware enough to know he was nervous and how to resolve it and that it all was overtaken by happiness for the adventure -- that's what got me. The tears I was holding back were happy tears. This was his time.
Just before he went in, I bent down in the flurry to kiss his still-smiling face. He reached up a hand for me to kiss -- a ritual I'd almost forgotten in this new year -- and grabbed my hand and placed a smooch in the center of my palm.
"I love you." It was getting harder not to cry. "Have an amazing first day of kindergarten."
He loved me, too, he said, and then he was off.
The end of the day came quickly. We celebrated with ice cream with one of his favorite friends. They told us about their daily behavior charts and the tables where they are assigned to sit and tried to remember details five-year olds seem incapable of remembering.
On the way home, he beamed from the back seat.
"I just feel like kindergarten's going to get funner and funner every day," he said.
That night, he had homework, to draw his favorite part of the day and to write a little something about why.
He hastily drew stick figures of the teacher reading a book to several primary-colored stick figure kids on a rug. Across the top of the page, in bold orange marker, he wrote proudly that his favorite part was:
THE HOL DAY!!!!!!!
I agreed. There was no one little part, no one exact moment. It was a package deal, a journey, a milestone. It was momentous, the hol, entire, elated thing.
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