My Heart Went to Preschool Yesterday
Monday was the big day, Evan's open house. And Wednesday, bigger still, the dreaded and feared "first day of school."
Shaun kept the other two at home both days so I could focus on Evan. Monday we talked about how we were just going to look at his school, but when "real" school started ("in two more nigh-nights,") he would take his lunch and get to go on the playground- today we were just looking.
We talked this over because I had a fear of him fixating on the playground before we even got inside and having a melt-down in front of his teachers because he wanted to go back and play on it. With VERY GOOD REASON I had this fear because that's precisely what he did...
When we first entered the room he saw the crayons they had out and busied himself at the small table right away. He wasn't coloring-in the apple on his worksheet like the other children, though. He was mixing colors to make new ones; mixing blue and yellow to make green and red and yellow to make orange and then experimenting with new combos that weren't so pretty. (He's a chemist, okay? Chemists don't think between the lines. They're into messes and explosions and breaking the rules for the sake of discovery. Kind of like when I step into a kitchen.)
The chemist hard at work, I had the opportunity to meet his teachers. There were two; Miss Tina and Miss... Sandy, was it? (I can't remember because she's going to be away on safari in Tanzania the first four weeks of school, and my brain seems to only hold on to "need to know" information now.) Filling in for her, though, was Miss Eva, who reminds me of my grandmother; sweet, kind and, although energetic for her age, nevertheless a doormat for 12 three-year-olds.
They gave me worksheets and tried to engage Evan, who kept his face planted in his work and reluctantly repeated the things I told him to say to them; a dazzling first impression he made.
His friends arrived and he was excited to see them for about 2 minutes and then came the meltdown I'd anticipated. Not just any old temper tantrum, but Evan at his worst, his absolute worst; "No I WON'T stay here. I DON'T want to be in this classroom. I want to be on the playground." As if saying the contractions more forcefully and LOUDLY would perhaps hike his chances of getting his way. (I would criticize him for this method except isn't that human nature... I do the same thing in adult ways, and when will we learn that being more forceful and stubborn won't make it more likely to go our way, already?)
So he's having a fit, what do I do? I get him out of there as quickly as possible, and drag him around the corner without so much as a thought about the strong possibility of his arm coming out of the socket. I kneel down and say, "you are making me very sad. Do you want mommy to cry?"
I did. I said that. Worst parent IN THE WORLD. (I already know, so no need to clarify that in the comments.) Nevermind that I really thought I might cry- there's never a reason good enough for using your child's emotions against him to discipline.
And so then his anger turned into anxious tears of guilt. He can't even listen to fake crying or watch a cartoon crying without freaking out. And I hadn't been taking that into account when I said these things, so I hear myself backpedaling; "I won't cry- no I won't cry, but I am sad. You are such a nice boy and you're acting like a very not nice boy. Your teachers aren't going to want to watch you if you talk like that. You need to act like the nice boy I know that you are."
None of this made any sense to me, even as I was saying it, and it certainly wasn't feeling productive or constructive, but these are the situations you find yourself in as a parent, when it feels like you're treading water just to stay afloat... just to try and keep your child from getting a frowning red dot by their name before school even starts, just to prevent the teachers from placing a mental "warning" label across their furrowed little forehead. And so as I squatted there, looking at him and feeling completely unqualified for the situation, it dawned on me: maybe this preschool thing wasn't going to be so hard on me after all. Because in that moment, in that moment I was ready to shove him back in the classroom and peel out of the parking lot on two wheels and never look back.
So Wednesday morning came and Shaun, Madalyn, and Jack were sleeping when Evan woke me. We had all morning together, just the two of us, while the others slept. We talked about his lunch and I read him the note I was putting in there so he would know what it said when he opened it at school. We breakfasted, showered, dressed, and then- we went over the rules; the hand-out we'd received at the open house with all of the classroom rules.
When we got in the car we talked about more pleasant things; what he might do there, his new lunch box, was he excited... then we pulled into the parking lot and lined up our Expedition next to the cars of his two other friends. The mothers made eye contact that spoke volumes. It felt as if we were lining up our horses and wagons on the border of a new frontier. At least we would have each other.
The children- there were 4 of them starting their first day- spilled out of the bellies of the three vehicles like happy little bees, swarming and shouting over their new lunch boxes and backpacks. We took pictures just outside the door. My camera battery died.
None of them even looked back. They flitted in the door, past the apples pinned outside that claimed their names, shoved their things in their labeled cubbies and went to work at the play dough laden tables. And we, we dragged our feet out the doors of the preschool as though we'd stepped in wet cement and were each 5 lbs heavier.
But the time flew. Stephanie and I had coffee cake and Sydney and Madalyn tried to figure out what to do with themselves without their big brothers bossing them around and leading them astray. It took an hour or so, but pretty soon they were dancing on top of the picnic table on the porch together, and, it turns out, remembered how to misbehave on their own just fine.
Jack slept through lunch while Madalyn and daddy and I had lunch. It was as if we were back to being a family of three again, and Madalyn loved the attention. We loved giving it to her. Before I left she dragged a Dorito hand across my white shirt and said, "Oh no! Yer shert! I'm sorry, mommy." Only a girl would understand the offense, I thought. And I didn't bother to change it before leaving, figuring I'd pick him up looking like that sooner or later, so it might as well be now.
Miss Eva stood at the door retrieving the children one by one, and looking as though she'd been run over twelve times by a Semi. I pretended to calmly wait my turn but could hear time ticking anxiously by like a stopwatch in my inner ears.
He was so excited to see me- I could tell by his face. But his first words to me were not "hi" or "I missed you" or anything of the kind, but rather- "I want my cup." That was just fine, though. I was so glad to see him I didn't care, but took his cup from his lunchbox and filled it to the brim at the first water fountain we came to.
We sat in the Florida heat in the car in the parking lot, air-conditioning on full blast but doors open, and he told me about his day. He told me he listened to a story about a tiger. He told me he met a little girl named Valerie, and that he made a puppet- showed me the puppet's eyes and yarn hair and body. "And these are his five legs," he laughed at his own sense of humor, at the anomaly he'd intentionally created.
Then I saw his mouth was bleeding and made him open it. A small chunk of his tongue was hanging and bleeding.
"Does your mouth hurt, Evan?"
"Nope," he sang.
"Are you sure,"I asked.
"I'm sure," he sang.
And my mind cooked up three or four scenarios as to how he got it and it pained me to not know. I had also noticed his eyelashes were dried together when I picked him up and though I didn't want to fixate on the negative since he hadn't mentioned it, I couldn't resist but eventually ask, "did you cry at all today?"
"Yes, I did."
"Why? What happened, sweetie?"
And then the following was very disjointed and some words took 6 times repeating before the sentences came out. He told me he had wanted me, missed me. He said I wasn't there and he didn't like me to not be there. He wanted me. School made him want me. "But then I listened to a story about a Tiger, and then YOU CAME!"
When I was in middle school I watched my dad perform some surgeries, one of them a total knee operation where he warned that there would be a loud crack as the bone split, like a tree cracking before it falls.
That's exactly what my heart sounded when Evan said these things to me in the heat of our car, through flushed cheeks and pink baby lips.
I held it together, though, and asked some questions and tried to reassure him that I would always pick him up. Eventually, after many questions and much patience, and from what I could gather, it seems he got thirsty or hungry near the end of class and tried to get his lunch box but was told not to. Then he was told to listen to a story and I would be there to get him in 10 minutes (this is what I'm piecing together.)
My friend Dana later asked her daughter what happened with Evan in class and was told he had been hungry. For all I know, judging by his tongue, he could've had a good cry over biting it during lunch... or maybe both. Maybe he bit his tongue having the fit. I'll have to ask his teachers tomorrow. But let me tell you Dana got A LOT more information out of Aubrey than I did from Evan. She got a whole song, verse by verse. A song that involved subtraction.
And somewhere therein lies the difference between males and females. Somewhere therein is the secret as to why Shaun thought it was funny to scare me with a prank at lunch, telling me I was ten minutes late to get Evan (and also providing a mental picture of him sitting alone on the steps with his lunch box waiting for me,) while I don't think it's funny at all. Therein lies the reason he can laugh about these milestones while I get choked up over the sight of Evan's name written on a red apple cut out of construction paper and pasted to a classroom door. That apple might as well be my heart pinned to the heavy wooden door. My bleeding heart.
