My son started kindergarten last week. Kindergarten! I have no idea how this could have happened already, but it has. It isn’t like it crept up on me. I spent a lot of time preparing for it. Hours were invested in researching schools, visiting schools, applying to schools, building cost-comparison spreadsheets for schools, and finally, choosing a school. Then, in the weeks leading up to the fateful first day, I fretted about how Chester would handle the transition. I did plenty of worrying about Chester (because I’m his mom and that’s what moms do), but I didn’t worry about myself and apparently that was an error. I completely failed to realize what a difficult transition kindergarten was going to be FOR ME.
Chester on his first day of kindergarten.
Me on Chester's first day of kindergarten.
I expected leaving Chester’s preschool to be difficult and it was. He has been going there since he was three months old and it has been a special place for our whole family. Chester went through each classroom at the center, so we knew practically every one. When we walked through the halls, everybody said hello. When I pulled into the parking lot each day, it felt like I was home. As we said goodbye on Chester’s final day, I felt a sense of loss and grief for the chapter we were closing. A couple of slices of pizza and a scoop of ice cream later, I was feeling like I was through the worst of it. Closing a chapter would be much more difficult than the adventure of beginning a new one, right? Wrong.
The past week has been surprisingly angst-filled, emotional and downright exhausting for me. I’ve felt like that awkward person at the party who doesn’t know anyone. I’ve wracked my brain wondering what Chester is doing and how he is feeling at every minute of every day. I’ve worried that his new teachers don’t know him yet and might pigeon-hole him into a persona that he is not. I’ve gotten lost in daydreams of Chester as a baby and snapped out of them into stereotypical “My baby is growing up!” tears. I’ve longed for the familiarity of my old commute and have been absent-mindedly taking the carpool lanes even though Chester is no longer my commuting companion.
I like to think of myself as an adventurous and spontaneous person, but the last week has made me wonder if I’m not actually more of a hardcore creature of habit and stability junky. Compared to many of my peers who have undertaken cross country moves, launched new careers, bought second houses and had second and even third kids, my life seems like a bastion of stability.
Despite the fact that I’ve been in the same house, in the same city, with the same job for a decade, and even longer in some cases, I don’t think I’m THAT change averse. I’ve been through some major changes in my life. I went to kindergarten myself once upon a time, after all. I don’t remember it being so dramatic when it was me. I honestly don’t even remember my first day of kindergarten and I only have a couple of clear memories of the whole year. Both of which, on a side note, are amazingly indicative of how the rest of my academic life would progress. I remember the thrill of learning to read. Figuring out that I could put the letters of the alphabet together in different combinations to make an unlimited number of words was an exciting discovery, and it was the beginning of my enduring love for school. On the flip side, I also remember my very first encounter with the severe stress that school had the ability to inflict on me. During some sort of standardized test, I came across a question I couldn’t answer and became so distraught that I began to cry. Somewhere in my five year old brain I knew that my stress-induced reaction far exceeded what the situation called for and I was embarrassed by that. When my teacher asked me what was wrong, I didn’t want to admit the truth, so I told her I was upset because my uncle died. My little white lie worked like a charm, except I spent the rest of the year living in constant fear that my teacher would talk to my mom and express her sympathy for the passing of my mom’s brother when he was, in fact, very much alive and well.
Lest anyone think kindergarten was the last major transition in my life, I can identify some others. My family moved to a different state in 6th grade. That was huge and although I recall some apprehension, I was mostly thrilled with the adventure of it all. Leaving home for college was certainly a significant change, but again, I approached it with eager anticipation. I couldn’t wait to move to the heart of a major city right out of college even though I had previously only lived in rural towns. And there certainly have been other changes and adventures in my personal and professional life – graduate school, getting married and becoming a parent to name a few. In general, I think I’ve handled most of these transitions, even the big ones, better than sending my child to kindergarten.
So I’ve been pondering, what’s going on with this particular transition? My current conclusion is that two things are at play. The first is pretty straightforward: change is hard. Even if the change at hand is wonderful and exciting, it still involves, well . . . change. Change brings newness, unfamiliarity, uncertainty and, worst of all, loss of control. I know, I know, I’ve heard all the lectures about how control is an illusion, but it’s an illusion I thoroughly enjoy and therefore choose to embrace, thank you very much. With kindergarten, Chester’s world just expanded a little further beyond the one he shares with me. That’s a good thing, but it makes the control freak part of my brain scream “Loss of control! Red alert! Loss of control! Danger! Loss of control!”
For example, I no longer know the exact classroom schedule like I did when Chester was in pre-school and because they don’t send home a detailed daily report in kindergarten, I have to rely on a five year old boy for my information. This experience ranges from confusing to completely hopeless. It goes one of two ways. Like this:
“How was your day?” I ask.
“Good,” Chester replies flatly.
“What did you do?” I inquire.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Did you do anything fun?” I persist.
“I can’t remember, Mom.”
Or, like this:
“How was your day?” I ask.
“It was good. We played dirty yard in P.E. and the balls were garbage like if you had a party at your house and there was garbage and you had to throw it in the other person’s yard. It was a party where there were helicopters. Not big helicopters but littler ones. And there were like a hundred million and six of them and they all landed on our porch and then they exploded “KABOOM!” And I rided them but then they started shooting poisonous and they bruke, I mean broke. Then there was Luke, he’s in after-care with me, but not in my same class, he’s in the other after-care, but I was still reading with him and he was at the party too. And I don’t have to ask to go to the bathroom because I was signed out all day because I wasn’t signed in, but I just have to find a buddy to go with first. Oh and mommy, I want those brown, crunchy crackers in my lunch – the ones that Eleanor has.”
I’m either left completely in the dark with zero information or overloaded with a confusing jumble of possibly real information mixed with crazy fantasy. As if those two scenarios weren’t bad enough, Chester came up with a new response that nearly stopped my poor, frazzled mommy heart:
“How was your day?” I asked.
“TERRIBLE!” he groaned like he was about to cry.
I stopped in my tracks. “Oh no, Chester, what happened?”
Long pause.
“Ah ha ha, just kidding!”
Chester the comedian. Hilarious.
I also felt a great sense of comfort and control at Chester’s daycare/preschool because of the bond I had developed with many of the other parents. I reminded myself that it took time to create those relationships and it would simply take time again. I was doing great with that mantra until it occurred to me that one important thing I had in common with all the other moms at Chester’s daycare might not be the case at his new school: We all worked; that’s why our kids were in daycare. I had a mild panic attack when I received a group email from a mom at Chester’s new school letting everyone know that she was organizing an ADO (that’s “after drop-off”) workout group. “After drop-off workout group,” I groaned. “Who are these people and don’t they WORK?!” Thus began visions of every other mom spending hours in the classroom each day, developing the kind of deep relationships with teachers that I could never hope to cultivate. Well, I must sheepishly confess that I had a little lesson in making assumptions when I found out the ADO workout organizer not only works, but is a doctor. So I’m not the only “working” mom, whew.
In addition to all the plain old newness and uncertainty I’m dealing with, there is another dynamic: the uniquely emotional nature of parenting. Of all the challenges of parenting, I was, and continue to be, least prepared for the emotional exhaustion. When I was pregnant, I had myself all psyched up for the physical exhaustion. Of course I never could have imagined how bad the physical exhaustion was going to be, but I had some sense that it was coming. What nobody warned me about, probably because it’s impossible to describe without experiencing it, is just how emotional it is being a parent. I had no idea how much I would care, how profoundly I would worry and how deeply I would love. Change involving Chester really is much, much harder than change that simply impacts me. Sending Chester to kindergarten has been much more harrowing than going to kindergarten myself. Thinking of Chester having a bad day is far more awful than having my own bad day.
When Chester was a baby and I was overcome with the intensity of emotion I was feeling, I told myself that surely it would fade a bit as he got older. I was very wrong and now, more than ever, I realize that the overwhelming emotions of parenting will never go away. As I fought back my tears dropping off Chester at kindergarten, I thought of a friend who admitted to crying after sending her daughter off for the first day of high school. “Oh my God,” I said as it dawned on me, “this is never going to end.” I’m going to be emotionally strung-out for the rest of my life – fraught with worry, bursting with happiness, battered by the bitter-sweetness of constant change. That’s parenthood, I guess.
I’m excited about Chester’s new school. I really think it’s going to be great for him and a wonderful place for our family, but the newness is still hard. I feel like I’m being exposed to sunlight for the first time – everything is too bright, too loud and too fast. I remember feeling this way when I brought Chester home from the hospital after he was born. Every nerve feels over-stimulated and raw. Nothing is on auto-pilot and it’s exhausting. The good news is that it’s getting better already. We are meeting wonderful families and teachers and administrators who are going out of their way to make us feel welcomed. The new routine is starting to feel “routine,” and, as a result, I’m finding myself able to think more rationally, accept the challenge of change and, dare I say, even enjoy it.
When we arrived to pick Chester up from the after school program at the end of the first day of kindergarten, the kids were outside on the playground. I searched the play structure and didn’t see Chester. I scanned the whole play yard and didn’t see Chester. Just as I was beginning to shift into irrational panic (“Oh my God, I knew this was going to happen! They lost my child on the first day!”), I spotted him. He was way off in a corner of the chain link fence, playing with an older boy. They were bent down, concentrating intently on something. Chester’s new friend was a third grader, but in my mind he was definitely shaving and driving. As I walked toward them, my thoughts raced: What is my baby doing with that big, grown-up kid? Are they playing poker? Smoking pot? Looking at porn magazines? It turns out they were playing an innocent game with a tennis ball and two cones, and, judging by Chester’s smile, he was having a great time.
Finally Chester saw me and I got that smile I’ve been getting since he was a baby – the “Hey, there’s my mommy!” smile that makes my heart fill up and overflow and feel like it’s going to explode – followed by the running leap into my arms. The smile and hug that say, in a world of constant change, there really are some things (the most important things) that always stay the same.
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