My ten year old daughter, Paige, just started at a brand new school on Thursday after two years of homeschooling.
The nerves about it have been evident for months as we’ve prepared, and talked the decision through at nauseum. She needs a lot of assurance about things.
This is putting it mildly.
She has wondered if kids would like her.
She’s not exactly like the other girls.
Paige is not one for frills and unicorn dresses.
She’s much more alien head ring, and band T-shirt.
This is the little girl who in kindergarten caused the teacher to text my phone with a photo attachment asking me if I was aware she had smuggled her sister’s broken hoop earring,
and was faking to have a septum piercing her first year at school.
Concerned about first impressions this year, she had me researching late one night as summer faded about the fastest way to get a Guns and Roses T-shirt shipped to her.
Apparently that was her entire vision for her first week – Show up and be epic.
Make it impossible to underestimate her.
(Well, that and forbidding me from packing sandwiches in her lunch until she “had time to scope out the sandwich scene.”
She said she didn’t want to be the “girl with the weird sandwiches,” which I didn’t even realize was a thing.)
The morning of the first day she woke me up sobbing when it was still dark out, standing only in her underwear, and telling me that she didn’t think she could do it.
#lifetimerelatability
At least that’s what I could make out.
I assured her that she could definitely do it, because she had a brand new Trapper Keeper: Object of My Layaway-Kid Desire Since 1985; Giver of Ultimate School Strength.
I’d never gotten a Trapper Keeper of my own because there had been “plenty of perfectly good, sturdy binders for a much better price,” per my own mom.
Surely no one with a Trapper Keeper could be experiencing doubt!
Not with all those 80’s geometric shapes with her!
All those pockets and clips and zippers and velcro? Your items would be secured infinite ways!
What was there left to worry about?!
But, she did worry.
She worried about where she’d sit.
She worried about where her part was.
She worried that every single kid would know way more things about everything than her;
But this is the kid who told me what the Burj Khalifa even was while I just sat on the couch looking wall-eyed. I have infinite faith in her.
Every night for weeks I had calmed her fears as I tucked her into bed.
It became a ritual: Wash her face, brush her teeth, have me tuck her in, have me counsel her for at least a half hour as she writhes and cries about all of it.
Day one went better than expected. She entered the school to music booming on large speakers, cheers from teachers, and balloons.
Neither of us even cried one tear like we thought we would.
She just waved a shaky goodbye to me, then disappeared into the classroom.
At 3pm she climbed back into the car grinning, and I thought, after months of school stress, maybe after just one day, we were finally in the clear.
How was I to know Day One’s worries would be replaced with Day Two’s newfound fear?
Her teacher had assigned a “Who Am I” poster, that I knew was just to make introductions and break the ice between the kids.
To hear Paige describe what was required, though, sounded like she would be expected to present a doctoral thesis with a power-point presentation that included laser lights and bursts of fire, with maybe a panther trick added in.
I read the sheet, confused as to why she was so worked up.
“Glue some photos of your family and pets, and write some words you feel describe you.”
Sounded easy enough.
WRONG.
So, so very wrong, as I’ve learned I often am.
I did not know the planning, discussion, and execution of this “Who Am I” poster was about to become my full-time job.
I was wrong about the girls all in school and me suddenly having all this free-time to rediscover myself. This poster needed all hands on deck!
Trips to CVS for printing things, find a glue that sticks;
Metallic paint pens would be nice…
Now to incessantly practice talking about it.
For an entire weekend we discussed this thing.
For three days I talked her off the ledge.
“Sweetheart, I promise. It’s a piece of construction paper with tape and a picture of the cat. That’s it.
This is not life or death.
Just show your pictures and point with your finger. You’re making it way too much of a thing.
You’re going to talk for a few seconds, then you will go sit.”
She worked on it with her tongue out, and, by George, we started getting into a groove.
Once it was done I thought we were past the hard part.
Again,
I could not have been more wrong.
Now she needed to discuss where she would keep it when she first got to school.
The swells of this project like sleeper waves sneaking up on you.
The night before she turned it in, she started in once more, and I actually said the words,
“Honey, I actually can never talk about this ‘Who Am I’ project again. Not even once.
I love you, and I care about your worries, but tonight I feel like I am one step away from my own ‘Who Am I’ project saying that I permanently moved alone into a bat-filled cave, never to return.”
Monday morning she came carrying it, looking around the school hallway, terrified, until we started spotting other kids’ posters and she looked up with her mouth open to catch my eye.
It was a look telling me I had been right all along because not one other poster looked as…
thorough as hers.
I think one kid’s was duct taped.
One looked woven from…animal hair?
It was laying in the grass being trampled across the field, so I really can’t be sure.
I promised her she’d do fine presenting hers, kissed her, and again she waved her shaky wave.
I spent that whole day anxious to pick her up and see how it went.
I knew I’d know right away if it had gone well easily.
She had said there’d be a certain way:
“If I come to the car making a face that looks like one Jim Carey would make that will be how you’ll know.”
(Parenthood has so many of these unconventional secret codes. Like how she hates me to say she needs deodorant, and I’m supposed to just say the code word she wants us to use, which she told me is, “Chocolate Chip.”)
On that afternoon she did climb in looking like that dear old Jim.
I asked her how it had gone after all that build up and she just shrugged and said,
“It was fine. It was actually really easy.”
Wait. EXCUSE ME?! After all that?! That was IT?!
She acted like it was nothing, with no reference to the fact that I had basically been wrapping her shoulders in a shock blanket over this blasted piece of construction paper for three full days.
I closed my eyes and smirked and flared my nostrils.
“It was easy.”
Hmph.
Tell that to my myelin sheath that no longer exists.
We drove away that day from the school parking lot so happy to be in the clear, free from school nerves and presentations.
School was going to be fine!
Everything was looking up! I could feel it!
I rolled down my window to feel the sun on my face, and absorb the soft California breeze.
Everything would be fine now. We’re moving on. See?
Look at me now! Just a regular mom with a calm ten year old not even on high alert about anything!
Footloose and fancy free!
But then a small voice came from the backseat as we drove:
“Only, now I am just worried about this thing called a ‘Reading Log’ that my teacher gave to me?…”
“Who Am I?”
Who she is is fakely pierced and nervous,
with hints of Jim Carey.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
