Slip-Sliding Away.

The Tuesday before this past one, the day after Labor Day, Simone started preschool.

I say preschool, but it is more like glorified daycare—now that she is allowed to be around other children I thought a group setting would be better than a nanny, and I do have to work, so off she goes, Monday through Wednesday from 8:15 to 4 o’clock. It’s silly to moon oven such a non-milestone, probably. It’s hardly prison. Though a mere eight minutes from downtown and our apartment, just across the river, her school is a picturesque warren of play areas and outside space and various flora and fauna. There are goats, llamas, rabbits, donkeys, chickens, ponies, horses, ducks, fish, a guinea pig, and a snake—that I know of. When I turned in her tuition, I had to sign a Pony Ride Consent.
A PONY RIDE CONSENT.
It’s paradise, basically, but that didn’t stop “The Way We Were” from playing all mournful-like in my head as I got her ready for her first morning. I wanted to take pictures, but it was dark and Simone was constantly in motion. I tried to get the traditional “child in doorway on first day of school” shot, but she wasn’t having it. She wanted to “GO! GO! GO!”
This is the closest I got:

Once at school, she walked agreeably with me to her classroom, saying “Hi!” to strangers. I hung her things on her hook while she settled immediately into the same chair she sat in when we visited for orientation, after pulling out the same bucket of hammers and Play-Doh slicers. I loitered nearby. Other parents arrived, and I eyed their children beadily. Did they look like pushers? Biters? I was alarmed to find that I was the largest mother in the room. I was also the palest and unwashedest, most of my cohort managing to look more put together than I despite the fact that they were all in yoga pants while I was wearing jeans (PANTS THAT BUTTON!). Most had additional children in the older classes, and seemed to know each other. They looked like people who knew the Sanskrit names of yoga poses and owned hand towels and whose investments came in the form of portfolios, rather than as a slightly pricey but especially versatile cardigan. These were people who never let their produce go bad, who never played chicken with their car’s gas light, who had whole rooms dedicated to “play.”
Tellingly, they had all dressed their children appropriately for the weather, while I—not having been outside in some time, and unaware of the forecast—had let Simone go to school like a tiny, bare-legged whore. I’d just finished forming that thought when Simone sneezed, boisterously, into the Play-Doh.
“Allergies!” I chirped, to no one.

Another child sat down at the table and a teacher got out crayons and paper for her to use, which naturally meant Simone wanted to color as well. Then a third child came up and started to take one of the many plastic slicers Simone was not using, and she pulled it firmly out of his grasp.

She graciously gave it back after I handed her one of the dozen identical items in front of her.

Determined not to relinquish her participation in any of the good times taking place at the table, my daughter then proceeded to color and slice Play-Doh at the same time, one hand per activity. Multitasking, if you will.

She didn’t notice when I left, and I drove home giddy and bereft.

Simone was happy to see me at the end of the day, but I could tell she’d been in a Mood—the class was outside on the playground when I arrived, and I’d seen her demanding to be picked up. I was told that she’d cried some in the morning, but had been happy after her nap. (She NAPS there, every day, which she’s long ago stopped doing at home). She didn’t eat any of her lunch, but that was no great shock to me. Her teacher, a fresh-faced early-twentysomething, said it helped Simone to look at the little picture of the two of us that I’d slipped into her pocket.

Leaving school, she was all smiles. She said “bye-bye Mac!” to a classmate (Max) and “bye-bye chickens!” to the chickens whose coops we pass on the way to the car. She continued her goodbyes to the poultry long after we’d left. At home she was fine for a while and then had an inexplicable meltdown, a tradition she has continued every day since—I think she finds the transition difficult. After the tantrum passed she was fine, carrying her school bags around and watching a much-deserved episode of Sesame Street.

She’s had trouble in the mornings since then, getting upset once we pull into the parking lot and she realizes where we are. We had one truly awful drop-off, complete with hysterical sobbing and cries of “Mom-MEE! Mom-MEE!” behind me as I forced myself to walk back to the car. Of course as I was driving away, I could see her doing her favorite thing of all, putting a ball through a basketball hoop (a bizarrely sporty activity, for a child of mine). I’m assured that the crying is all very normal, and that she is fine after a bit, if quiet, but I’m having a hard time with it. As I’ve said before, after having to leave her all those nights in the NICU, I have abandonment issues. By which I mean guilt, and fear that SHE’LL have abandonment issues.
She’s only had five days of this, I remind myself. It’s an adjustment period. But then I wonder whether by “adjustment period” they mean the development of something like a callous. “Desensitization period,” or “eventual acceptance of futility period.” Maybe she’s too young. Maybe she’s too old, and this is a sign of just how much she missed during those two long years of quarantine. Maybe it’s just the cantankerous developmental stage she’s at that makes everything a battle, lately.

I vacillated wildly on whether to place Simone in the Toddler classroom or in Preschool I. Preschool I is for children two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half, while the toddler room gets 16 months to two-and-five-months. Technically, Simone should be in Preschool I. She made the cut-off with almost a month to spare, but I went with the Toddler class instead. The Preschool I class happens to be an older one this year, mostly kids over three. Cognitively, Simone may be ahead of the pack, but she’s still emotionally immature, and has no experience with social anything. The last thing she needs is to feel confused and behind right out of the gate. Besides, all I want is a safe place for her to play and meet other children and begin to be de-feral-ized—which, after all, is what preschool is for. It seems preposterous to concern myself unduly with whether my child is being “challenged” while she’s still lacking the hair god gave a hamster.

When my mother called to see how the transition was going, her first question was “Is she sick yet?”
“Nope!” I said, and so naturally the next night, last Wednesday, having finished one full three-day week, Simone had a cold. She improved quickly enough that she’ll be back at school today, which I am guiltily pleased about, because there are no refunds for absences {Sigh. At the last minute this morning, lunch packed, ready to go…we decided to keep her home. Partly the awful cough, partly her mood in sickness, which oughtn’t to be inflicted upon anyone else}. I’m sure it’s only the first of many, many illnesses, because as we learned this summer as we began our tentative steps out into the world, that is what happens when you take a child who’s never been exposed to anything and toss her in the teeming petri dish of pint-sized humanity.
The exposure isn’t limited to germs, of course. After Simone got home that first afternoon, she kept saying something, I couldn’t tell what. Other people can’t always understand everything she says, but it’s rare that I am totally unable to piece it together myself, and I realized with a shock that it was possible that I didn’t understand whatever it was she was talking about because I hadn’t been there, a possibility that would, from then on, only become more likely.

The interior workings of my daughter’s tiny mind are ever her own secret, but externally, our Venn diagram has always been two circles drawn more or less directly atop one another. Now, for the first time, they are sliding apart, and decisively. Her world just got much bigger, and I can’t help but feel simultaneously excited, guilty, proud, jealous, wistful, and twelve other murky, unidentifiable emotions.
I have my own adjustment period, I suppose.