First Day of School

Author: Eden Pontz
Published: September 15, 2009 at 11:44 am

But, instead of drinking her milk and scarfing down her typical 5-8 pancakes (they're small, don't worry), she tentatively ate two and said she was done. Must be nerves. In my case, I kept up my cheerful and excited facade. Well, it wasn't a total facade, as I was cheerful and excited, but I was also melancholy and a bit scared for her. Scared for us, actually. Just walking past the school yard and seeing all the big kids lined up outside had me shaking in my boots with that "first day" anticipation. After all, this was the bigger, badder world of kindergarten. The ratio of teachers to kids had diminished drastically compared to her pre-school days, meaning it would be unlikely that there would be anyone with time enough to make sure her nose wasn't running, to heat up her lunch, to get her to "just try" using the bathroom even if she said she didn't have to go...o.k. stop this train now before I want to throw myself off. 

The teacher handed both girls a piece of paper with "Scavenger Hunt" printed at the top, and a list of things they were to find in the classroom. The kids were off and running. First on the list, her cubby. (A perfect word, for an almost perfect concept.) With a little squeal, she ran over to the cubbies and quickly found her name. "Oh no!" she cried. I walked over to discover that her name was spelled incorrectly, and she knew it. As I looked around the room, I notice no less than four other places where the children's names appeared on walls and doors, and sure enough, her name was spelled wrong each time it appeared. So, I grabbed a Papermate "Flair tip" marker from off the table and began walking around the room to make stealth corrections, hoping the teacher wouldn't notice. 

Next on the list--find the bathroom, which they did. They opened the door to reveal a toilet so cherubic I thought surely it would be hard for any kid to resist! Heck, I was even tempted to test it out, but knew full well that I'd not be able to get up from it while still keeping any dignity in tact. My daughter peeked into the room and promptly said, "The bathroom is dirty. I'm gonna have to try to use ours at home before school." From the sink, to the book library, to the calendar and the Meeting Rug, my daughter happily searched for each thing, as if she'd never seen anything like it before in her life. She'd come running back to me for a little check mark besides each item on the list and when she'd found them all, I made a big smiley face on her paper. 

At that point, the teacher called all the kids over to meet on that meeting rug, and she began to read, Audrey Penn's "The Kissing Hand," about a little raccoon who's afraid of school, and the solution his mother comes up with to remind him she's always thinking of him. As the book ended, she had us parents blow a kiss to our kids and leave the room. 

I'd taken the day off from work in order to be able to drop her off and pick her up, and what happened in between felt like the shortest and longest three hours at the same time. I'd planned on being able to work out, and do some grocery shopping, and other errands (including buying a new thermos to replace the brand new one that my husband had managed to lose before school even started), but I got very little on my "to do" list done. All I could think about was how my little girl was doing in her new surroundings and try not to think about how everything in her life seemed to be moving very fast...too fast. 

And all of the sudden, I realized that I'd have to hustle to make it back to pick her up on time. My husband and I arrived one minute late, and already all the kids were out in the playground area laughing, jumping, and generally enjoying themselves. I scanned the playground for my daughter and for a moment, my heart jumped because I couldn't find her. Then I saw her on the slide and breathed a sigh of relief. She reported to us that her first day had been a success. 

That night at dinner we had several discussions that seemed relevant to life in kindergarten and growing up. I'd discovered that my daughter had only eaten her dessert from her lunchbox, and left everything healthy in the bag, and I'd explained that would need to change or I'd have to cut off her dessert supply. She asked us, "Why didn't God make it so that the good food really tasted good, and the bad food tasted bad? Then I'd want to eat the good food instead of the bad stuff!" This was followed by the hefty question, "Now that I'm in kindergarten, why am I still a kid?" 

I responded, "When you're a grownup, you'll wish you could be a kid again." 

She burst out laughing at the thought.  "Kids want to be grownups and grownups want to be kids."

"And no one's happy," my husband said.  My daughter laughed again. "Yeah, no one's happy about it."

But on her first day of kindergarten, I felt happy to be a grownup and that she is my kid.