We Are Really Here
The past two weeks have been full of firsts. My husband’s first week as an Assistant Principal, my oldest son’s first day of pre-primary, my first full week of school drop offs, our first week and weekend back home. My youngest son waited patiently and excitedly until Wednesday this week to have his turn for a first. Finally, after insisting on wearing his school shoes and school bag to take his brother to school for over a week, it was time for him to go to his school. He’s not quite three and it seems crazy to me that in one generation we have gone from just having pre-primary to prepare us for primary school (what I did 25 years ago) to also having kindy to prepare us for pre-primary and now pre-kindy to prepare for kindy. It may be crazy to me but it’s how it is and luckily for me the small town we live in has the most amazing three year old program I could have hoped for. My older son went to the same one the year we arrived in town and I was quickly impressed and incredibly grateful for the amazing woman who runs it. She has decades of experience as an early childhood teacher assistant and though she could choose to retire or focus solely on her family business she chooses to teach our little ones, for two hours a week, how to be ready for kindy. It’s a bit like a structured playgroup where they have some mat time, some craft time, fruit time and some outside play but they do all of that without Mum there. For us that meant that when my son started kindy it was with a great big excited “I got this” smile. I remember feeling a little bit ripped off for a second when he happily walked into his class and gave me a quick wave on his first day but that second passed quickly and I knew in the next second that I was incredibly lucky to have had that moment and not the heart wrenching one I had always envisioned of the teacher pulling his squirming little body off my hip.
So on Wednesday morning after a terrible night we did ‘big school’ drop-off and then headed to ‘Stepping Stones’. I was a little apprehensive, especially after all the excitement seemed to disappear in the car and he asked if I would stay with him. Would he tell them when he needed to go to the toilet? Would he eat hundreds of strawberries without me there to stop him? Would he get overwhelmed and have a meltdown because he was so tired? There were so many things I was apprehensive about but I was also hopeful. I watched him put his bag down and go straight to the fishing set up (he loves water play like nothing else). I watched him interact with two other little boys whom he didn’t know. I watched him stop another Mum walking past to ask her something. I stood behind my mobile phone taking a photo and I let the hope take over the apprehension because he’s happy and capable and he’s not the ‘tough’ kid in the class at this stage. I pushed him on the swing for a bit before his teacher rang her bell and I watched him follow the other kids into the little room and sit down on the mat. He’d done it. We’d done it.
At home I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I felt like it was a momentous occasion and maybe I should’ve planned something for the morning but I started off doing what I would’ve done any other morning. I put some washing on, did the dishes and swept the floor- I just did it in a very quiet house with no interruptions and as I did I thought about how we’d made it to this point. It made me think about my twenty seven year old self and all the things I wish I could tell her now with the clarity of hindsight. That twenty seven year old woman who had a two year old son and another on the way would’ve loved to know what I know now. That her second child will be different in so many ways, different to his brother and different to what she expects. I want to tell her that her expectations are the problem not the fussy baby who will soon be in her arms. I want to tell her to hold on for dear life because things are going to get very rough before they get better, rougher than she can even imagine where she is now. I want to tell her that her limits are about to be pushed and stretched and that she will persevere further than she thought she ever could and then further again and that she will survive through it. I want to tell her that there may not be a reason or an answer but that when she stops trying to fix him and make him fit into her picture of what her family should be she will learn to cope and live again. Finally I want to tell her that the week before her 30th birthday she will drop her big boy off at school and her baby off at 3 year old kindy. She will go home alone feeling sad and proud and lost and relieved all at once. She will get there, maybe not in the way she thinks, with everything tied up in a neat little bow but in the way she is meant to.
So I guess this is the point now where I take some time back for myself, some real ‘me time’ to do the things I love. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been glued to my children for the past five years. I have worked on a casual basis, I put them in a family daycare once a week for 6 months while I found my feet in a new town, friends and family have watched them for me and I’ve even been on an overseas holiday without them. This two hours a week is different though, it’s ‘mummy guilt’ free, I’m not feeling like I’m putting my needs before theirs, I’m not pushing to get as much done as I can to justify the money or the time away from them and I’m not rushing back to relieve whoever has them. These two hours are for me and for him equally because it’s time for him to begin his journey of independence and time for me to let him go just enough to get a bit of me back. I spent the hour and a half after the housework was done happily getting nothing done. I ran myself a bath, I sat in the cozy corner of the couch by myself and wrote, I even stared at the blank wall and sipped at my cup of tea for some of it. I got back to pick him up much earlier than I needed to and stood with anticipation wondering what shorts he’d have on, if the teacher would head in my direction for a chat, if he’d be smiling or frowning. He walked out slowly looking a little blank but once he made it over to me he wrapped his arms around me like a koala. I had to pull his favourite cookies out of my bag to get him to let go and then we wandered over to the drying rack to find his work. He’d painted an apple for me and made a valentine’s hat and he looked as proud as I felt as he showed me. With his gigantic cardboard hat on his head he collected his bag and brought it to me to put on his back. I walked to the car just ahead of him with my phone snapping photo’s as he walked, pulling silly faces at me and I thought to myself “Yep we are really here”!
