“Mommy, go work.”
Jake said these words gently, with a firm hand on my knee as if to steady me for the blow of his very first (but, oh, I know, definitely not his last) leave-me-alone-already.
We were in his new classroom, on his first day at the “big kids” preschool across the street from his former pre-preschool. I had been in the room with him for something over an hour, slowly but surely coaxing him away from my lap, suggesting he interact with the other kids, gently edging my way toward the door. Proving, in other words, what a great mom I am to anyone who might be watching. Which was, approximately, no one.
Except Jake. Who, after a while, felt he had to coax me out of his hair with a gentle “Mommy, go work,” that assured me he was, indeed, okay without me.
I was thrilled.
I mean this in a pure, completely thrilled, not the least bit traumatized by my son’s step toward adulthood way. After all, I had been far more nervous about his transition to the new school than he was. He had already visited several times and knew there was a gym with basketball hoops, which is about all he really needs in life. I, on the other hand, had been struggling with a random comment from a parent I recently met whose son had been through the same class; the teacher, he told me, “is tough.”
Tough on the kids or tough the parents? I wondered nervously.
I had no worries about Jake. He doesn’t bite or push and apparently follows his teachers’ directions consistently even if he sometimes has something better to do than following his parents’. In other words, he had nothing to fear from a take-no-nonsense teacher.
No, I was worried about me. In particular, I spent most of the long drive home from our holidays in St. Louis imagining scenarios in which his new teacher would chew me out for unconscious infractions of the many, many rules a North Carolina preschool apparently must follow to receive state accreditation. Was I, in fact, worthy of sending my child to preschool?
My hour with Jake in his new class assured me that I was. His teacher, in fact, was quite kind, and not nearly as tough as some of the ones who had trained me at the pre-preschool. And so, finally, I found myself able to return my attention to Jake’s well being. And felt nothing but pleasure when he told me his being was more than just well, thanks very much, and he preferred I leave him to do what two-year-olds do in school.
I should have known it was too easy to last.
