It is now precisely twelve days, two hours and forty-five minutes until Alex starts preschool. Not that I’m counting. I’ve been focusing on this step for quite some time now, mostly because I’m looking forward to the relative calm of having only two in the house…and plotting to use respite care so I can squeeze in an extra hour or two of writing time.
Alex is excited, but I’m not sure it’s close enough for him to really process yet. He seems to be taking things in stride. Whether he gets nervous later we’ll see. But me? All of a sudden, I’m anxious.
Finding a preschool for Alex has been a weird process, long and frustrating, even though I didn’t do much—just made phone calls and took recommendations from friends. I’ve never even been to the school, much less examined its curriculum in detail. The point of preschool is to give Alex a transition between staying home and full-day kindergarten (which is basically all that is available here). Still, we didn’t intend to be lazy or act like this is an unimportant step. Yet we missed the open house this weekend, out of sheer busy-ness. So they sent us a letter with all the pertinent details. It went on for three pages, and suddenly there’s a knot of anxiety in my stomach, about dropoff, and pickup, and programs, and lunchtime, and…
Notice, these are anxieties on my own behalf, not his. Alex is the supremely well-adjusted kid, who went to the dentist for the first time with no trepidation whatsoever, and when it was done, his only comment was, “So that’s what it feels like to have your teeth cleaned. I wondered what it would feel like!”
Far more high-maintenance are arrangements for Julianna’s preschool. The path of least resistance is to put her in Early Childhood Special Ed with the school district. We hear it’s a great program, but we don’t really know. Christian is adamant that she should be pushed academically throughout school; we want to set high expectations, and we’ve also heard that ECSE is mostly about social learning—following directions, walking in line, and so on. (Although, come to think of it, that may not be a bad curriculum for Miss Mischief.)
There is a speech-language intensive program housed at MU, as well as a preschool run by the Department of Human Development & Family Studies. So, with less than six months to go, we’re exploring, applying, and discerning. Along with exploring the Catholic school option for elementary school.
These are the things that we forget quickly. The process of discerning and decision-making, applying and so on, is all-encompassing in its time, but two years later, you usually can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. I think about the twelve apartments I lived in from August of 1997 to September of 1999, when we got married, and by and large I cannot for the life of me remember how I searched out all those leases and subleases. In any case, twelve days from now, we’ll know all. “Hey, Alex,” I say to my son, who is wandering around with a jump rope. “I’m writing about you and preschool. Are you excited about preschool?”
“Oh,” he says, and hums to his jump rope. “Do-do-dumdum, hum…yeah.” And goes on playing.
Ah, it must be nice not to have any worries, little boy.
Kathleen M. Basi 