The unbearable unbearableness of preschool

Isaac has a new evening ritual: The Asking of The Question. “Where we going tomorrow?” he’ll inquire, all innocent like, but Rachel and I know where this is heading. Mostly, we are able to answer either that he’s going to spend the day with his longtime babysitter or that we’re having a family day. And he — quite literally — shouts “YAY!” and throws his arms in the air for joy. And then he says, "And after that, where we going? And after that?" He keeps up this line of questioning we reach the answer he's been angling for. And then, there is no shouting of the YAY. There is no throwing of the arms in the air for the joy. Because, eventually, we do have to concede that Isaac will eventually have to head off to war preschool.

And then comes the mourning, the sobbing, the telling us repeatedly how much he does not want to go to preschool, how he doesn’t like it, how he wants to stay home with us or go to the babysitter. Last night, he sobbed himself to sleep. Then, at 5:30 this morning, he appeared in my bedroom doorway to pick up where he left off. “Mommy,” he said, “I don’t want to go to preschool.” He said it over and over, and then it would dull down for a little while as he almost let himself — and me — fall back asleep before jerking himself awake lest he relax and sleep and hasten the arrival of morning and the dreaded preschool. “I know, honey,” I keep telling him. “I know you don’t want to go. I know.”

Over the course of the morning he seemed to begin to resign himself to the thought that you might actually have to go. It was like moving through the stages of grief: from denial (“I don’t want to go to preschool.” I know.) to anger (“I don’t want to go to preschool!” I know, honey.) and bargaining (“But can I bring my blankie to preschool?” Of course you can, sweetheart.) to depression (“I don’t want to get out of bed today to go to preschool. I’m too tired to go to preschool.” Well, of course you are, because you woke up at five in the morning and have been protesting about preschool ever since.) and, finally, acceptance (“Will you tell me on the clock when I can go home?”).

YAY!

Fortunately, Rowan was available to add some levity to the situation. At first, he was solicitous and sweet, bringing his brother teddy bears and blankets and offering hugs and wise counsel: “I didn’t like junior kindergarten when I first started, but it got better.” When that didn’t work, he resorted to scatological humor, with much more success: “Isaac, are you going to bring POO to preschool? Are you going to bring YOUR BUM to preschool? Are you going to bring PEE to preschool?” Normally I try not to pay attention to the potty talk, but, given that it was the first time I had seen Isaac crack so much as a smile in 12 hours, I played right along. The reprieve didn’t last, though, and Isaac trudged tearfully into the beautifully appointed preschool classroom with its fishies and magic wands and natural lighting and oatmeal with raisins and coloured water. COLOURED WATER! What’s not to like, right? The best I can say about the morning was that at least he managed to walk into the room of his own accord, and that I didn’t hear screaming as I exited the building. I remembered my friend Scott’s comment about leaving his son at daycare lo these many years ago: “Maybe the saddest thing in the entire world is a child who is waving goodbye and crying at the same time.”

It’s classic (isn’t it? Say yes.). I know he’s fine at preschool. I know it’s a nice place, full of lovely, caring teachers, beautiful play areas, wonderful food. I mean, I’d spend the day there if I could. I know he eats well and naps there. I even have proof — in the form of photographs taken by the teachers of him enjoying various activities in an effort to convince him that he actually might like preschool — that he has fun there, at least some of the time. But it’s still just so, so sad to have my little boy — my usually happy little boy — be so, so sad.

I ache for him. I really do. I get — or, at least, I assume I get — how much his little world revolves around security, around the familiar. He’s all about the comfort zone, is Isaac: his mommies, his babysitter, his brother, his blanket, his thumb. With enough of those props in place, he’s set, outgoing, everybody’s sweetheart. He does funny little shuffling dances and proffers kisses, asks questions, offers his help. But he doesn’t feel safe yet, apparently, at preschool. And thus he mourns. And I ache for him.

Mostly, though, I ache at the amount of time he spends grieving for the future, his sorrow for the thing that is about to happen. I ache at all the non-preschool hours, hours that could be spent perfectly happily, but that instead are spent anticipating with horror the next day’s events. He’s awfulizing, as my friend Monica likes to call it, living in the future, and a bleak future at that. It’s a skill that I have, sadly, perfected, one that I now spend much of my time trying to get less good at. But I am pushing 40 and Isaac is three, much too young to be envisioning a hopeless tomorrow. “Honey,” I keep saying to him, “right now we’re not at preschool. Right now, we’re going to bed. Right now, we’re fine.” I want him to Be Here Now, and he spends every minute of Now trying to impress upon me the urgency of the fact that he does not want to go Somewhere Else Tomorrow.

This, too, will pass. It will. It must. I’m envisioning a positive future here. Maybe someday soon my son will, too.

My dulcet tones...

... can be heard today — talking about (what else?) And Baby Makes More — on CFUV 101.9 FM. That is, they can be heard on the radio for those of you lucky enough to actually be in Victoria, BC, today, where I’m guessing that the illusion that it’s still fall is being perpetuated. Tune in between 1 and 2 PM Pacific time. For those of you elsewhere, you can listen in online at www.cfuv.uvic.ca. It’s a good thing “Women on Air” didn’t try to interview me last week, because the interview would have been punctuated by coughing fits and extended nose-blowing sessions. So sexy. Yes, hot on the heels of H1N1, the dreaded, month-long sinus infection with the bonus pack of hacking cough has returned. I’d like to think that the germs have rendered my voice appropriately Kathleen Turner-esque, but really I sound like Harvey Fierstein just inhaled some helium.

Speaking of Harvey, if I hadn’t already given away my right thumb to the past year, I would give it away now to go see him play Tevye in the production of Fiddler on the Roof currently touring North America but — surprisingly — not stopping in Thunder Bay. What, David Mirvish, the 30-odd Jews up here weren’t a big enough draw? I guess I can’t blame you when the local Santa-meter is already pushing 11. Exhibit A.: my son’s PUBLIC SCHOOL senior kindergarten curriculum, which seems to have emerged intact from the 1950s. It’s all decorated with pictures of Santa and Christmas trees and reindeer and the like, and filled with chirpy instructions to “Decorate your tree and bring it to school this week!” “Write a letter to Santa!” “Practice your holiday songs and teach them to your family!” “Count the days until Christmas!” “Put out milk and cookies for Santa and a carrot for his reindeer!” (Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. I did add in those exclamation marks.)

Discussion with the school is ensuing. Wish us luck in convincing the powers that be that it’s time to break with, as Tevye would say, “Tradition! Tradition!” in favour of some December activities that feel just a wee bit more, oh, multicultural. Inclusive. You know — something that makes me feel less like I’m living in a ghetto.

Five-year-old

Dear Rowan,

In Thursday’s mail, there it was: a bright red envelope with a British stamp, addressed to you. Inside was a birthday card from your doting Gaga, wishing you a most wonderful fifth birthday. The two crisp bills in the envelope didn’t hold your attention nearly as much as the fact that the card came with a pin with a big red “5” on it. You turned it over and over in your fingers, and wondered out loud if you should wear it right now.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You’re still Four, aren’t you? If you wear your ‘5’ pin right now, Four might feel bad. Maybe you should wait a few days. Maybe you shouldn’t wear it until your birthday party.”

I expected you to tell me in no uncertain terms that you wanted to wear the pin anyway, that it was yours and that you could do with it what you liked. I expected you to say something to the effect of, “I’m in charge of me. I make my own rules.” But you took me seriously, calmly even, putting the pin aside until the weekend, when you were surrounded by a frenetic gaggle of senior kindergarten classmates at a bowling alley.

Yes, we ushered out four and rang in five by taking 10 four- and five-year-olds bowling on Saturday morning. And, let me tell you, it was a good call. The idea of your birthday party had overwhelmed me for weeks. Every time I thought about what to do, I got tired: the food, the invitations, the guest list, the decisions, the cleaning, the entertainment. The guilt at the possibility of not getting everything exactly right. Not to mention fitting it all into a weekend filled with grandparental visits and out-of-town guests, a children’s event at the synagogue, and, oh, a book launch. Picking up the phone and calling Mario’s Bowl was the most liberating thing I’ve done in months: all we had to do was invite the kids and bring a cake. And loot bags. With the surge of energy I got from the weight of birthday-party planning lifted from my shoulders, I managed to get it together to get out my mother’s — your Bubbie Ruthi’s — vintage Betty Crocker cookbook (“Decorating fancy cakes has become a fascinating hobby for many women. With a little practice... you too can turn out pretty decorations for special occasion cakes. And someday, you will perhaps trim a tiered wedding cake for a daughter or friend.”) and whip up — with the help of you and your brother — a Smartie-dotted rendition of Black Midnight Cake:

Your brother in particular found it fascinating. Yes he did.

 

Yes, outsourcing the birthday party was the best thing in the world we could have done, even if only because, at the end of an hour of bowling with you and your friends and a few toddlers thrown in for good measure, and then helping corral pizza and cake and loot bags, I was so exhausted that my jaw ached and I had to stare at the ceiling for half an hour in bed and thank God that we had chosen not to hold the event at our house because then I would have been catatonic.

It’s not that anyone behaved badly. In fact, you were all models of picture-perfect SK behaviour. It’s just, Rowan, that you — like all of your friends — are the merest bit, well, exhausting. I’ll tell you a secret: Four (also known as your fifth year on this earth) has tested my resources so often that sometimes I felt like I didn’t have thumbs, like I’ve been holding on with only an imperfect, slightly treacherous grip. Even though I jokingly told you that you might not want to cut off your time as a four-year-old any earlier than you have to, during the past 365 days, part of me has often wished for the end of Four, for the arrival of Five and, perhaps, a slightly more peaceful time. Some days, Five couldn’t arrive soon enough.

Don’t get me wrong: Four has also been fantastic, fabulous. All vestiges of babyhood have fallen away from you over the past year, replaced by big-kid confidence. You still love to be read to, but now you read to us, too, entire books from cover to cover with barely a stumble. You tolerate Thomas the Tank Engine and Elmo, but you have started to cross the line into Pokémon and Bakugans and — when we let you — computer games. Big-kid stuff. You have friends, real friends, with whom you create complex games and worlds during the courtyard recess. You are competent, insisting on carrying in the bags of groceries, programming the stereo, addressing the birthday invitations. You probably know more about my iPod than I do, and you take decent photographs. You have real conversations on the telephone, even if you can’t sit still while talking (or, for that matter, while eating) and instead circle the ground floor, climbing up and over the couch and across the radiators as you talk to your Rob, your grandparents, your godparents, your friends, and every single person who calls our house when you’re home, because you won’t let us answer the phone — that’s YOUR job. “I’ll get it!” you yell, jumping up from whatever task is at hand and running for the phone. “I’ll get it!”

Over the past year, I have talked to the parents of many of your friends. Often, I asked them, “So, how’s Four treating you?” And, so often, they roll their eyes and then they hold up their hands and show me that they too have no thumbs, just scabs to show that they once had a grip. And this has, paradoxically, helped to keep me sane.

At the same time, the four-letter parts of Four seem to be fading just a bit, replaced more and more often by the fabulous parts. I’ll tell you another secret: as much as Four was about you learning some of the rules of appropriate behaviour, just as much of it was about me and your other mother learning, again and again, what it means to be a parent, what it means, paradoxically again, to find your equilibrium by embracing the loss of control.

So when you and your nine friends and some of their siblings and your own brother, plus almost that many adults, all showed up at the bowlerama on Saturday, I watched you roll gutter ball after gutter ball and all do your crazy Four- and Five-year-old things: climb all over the ball-return equipment until the bowling alley employees had to tell you to stop; hoard the pink balls; obsess over turn-taking and the correct spelling of everyone’s names on the computers; lie on the floor, spinning a ball and chanting, “It’s the universe! The universe!” You barely ate your pizza, you picked off the pepperoni, you all wanted pink Smarties, you sang alternate, scatological lyrics to Happy Birthday. You were fantastic.

Happy fifth birthday, Rowan. I can’t wait to see what your sixth year brings us.

Love,

U-Mum