So, my daughter, who will be 3 in August, is going to start at a pre-school-themed day-care 3 days a week. She starts tomorrow, and I'm anxious, all the way down to my bones. I've researched and visited and made hundreds of phone calls, trying to find care that is actual "care", when we can't afford $1000 per month (and up, in some places in the Bay).
More below the fold:
But she has to go. She has been to two dance classes at Oakland Parks and Rec, and they are the high point of her week. She loves "dancing school" and has made lifelong friends with one little girl there, her first "real friend" (one she chose herself).
I also need to have a chance to get some of my homework done, & clean my house, cuddle my son. Because I'm going crazy. Turns out, though, I'm not alone.
This is the narrative of...motherhood: half-finished sentences, everything interrupted, my days fitting together like the jagged edges of a broken cup. Nothing else makes me feel this way—so utterly split apart by anxiety and love and desperation. Becoming a mother has exposed a new subset in the language of my emotions. I know raw anguish now, and a joy so intense it makes me gasp, my body covered in goose bumps.
Sometimes Mothering magazine can be a little too granola for me, but this article by Katherine Gyles explained my response to both Julian and Rory perfectly. While some things are clearly more about the beauty of a (quiet) new baby:
As he nurses, his feet kick erratically, as though being in his body still surprises him. Then, with a sigh, he's asleep, milk running down his cheek, his breathing light and steady. I shift him back to my lap and watch his sleeping face. His lips move with the involuntary sweet memory of my breast, and his hands curl inward at the fingers, protecting his soft palms. Then, suddenly, like sunbeams, sleep smiles flutter across his face. I catch my breath.
But the need I have to find Rory a place where she'll be cared for, that's part of this, too. I found a few places I could afford for her to go, and after choosing each, was awake all night with nightmares about her being neglected. I went so far as to light a candle in front of the same Virgin of Guadalupe (in Newman Hall) where I begged for Julian's safety in surgery, and ask that I either be made comfortable with one of the places I'd chosen (if I was being neurotic) or find a place I could leaver her and know she'd be happy. It had been hounding me, terrifying me.
And then I found her the place she's heading tomorrow. Friendly, active, lots of outdoor time and lots of kids her age. A kind and happy lady in charge. Circle time. My heart swelled. I knew she'd be gaining in that environment, and that she'll be happy to go in to mornings. And I needed that. Because, like Gyles explains,
Even in labor, I still knew only my own experience; the words I'd used up to that point contained no trace of the fierce protectiveness I would feel toward this small being when I first held him in my arms. Then, as his otherworldly but mammalian scent was permanently imprinted on my brain, my linguistic map of self, too, was changed. No longer I, but we. No longer want, but need.
How about you all? How did you handle the first day of school/daycare/preschool?
UPDATE:
She was thrilled this morning to pack up her backpack, hop in the bike an head out. Once DH's business trip is over, he'll be taking her, but this week and next it is up to me.
We got there and once she found a little boy and a batmobile, I was kissed and ignored. I came to get her and she'd just started to cry as some of the other kids were leaving, but she ran to me, kissed me, and grabbed my face. "Yook (look) at me, Mama. I did miss you."
I got 3 assignments and 15 loads of laundry done! And she goes back tomorrow!
Pictures (of course):
All dressed up
Batman backpack
On our way!
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