K to the 5

You know that cute little blond girl I write about sometimes? My darling daughter, Chloe? Last week she started kindergarten. Fully integrated, full day.

It was a strange day, that first day of school. She had a drop-off orientation day the day before, and though I didn’t cry, my belly twisted into a knot as I watched my little girl, standing a head shorter than most of the other kids, walk into the school with her little walker, ushered by her helpful aides.

Sean drops her off in the mornings, and so I was saved the agony of having to watch it a second time. After Theo rode away on his bus, I walked home to the empty house. The empty house is not foreign to me, but this early, with this amount of time stretching out ahead of me was definitely a new feeling. It was not sad. It was not excited. It was more like, “Huh.”

I wandered. I wandered the house looking at the piles of stuff that had developed over the past couple of days as we prepared for school’s start, but it did not occur to me to pick up any one of these piles and distribute the contents to their rightful and designated place as I continued to wander. I thought to myself, “This is what I will put away when I clean later.” I did not entertain the possibility of saving myself the second trip around the house.

I wandered around the internet. I looked up articles on the importance of traction control in a winter climate. I looked up the release date for the new iPhone. I read USA Today on my iPad. I dared to tap the alluring red square “P” that is the Pinterest app. I wandered around the geek page.

I stood up from my chair, determined to do…something. I stretched and sat back down again. While I sat I thought of things I needed to remember to do when I decided to give standing another go. I played around in my head with the idea of a sort of pulley system for to-dos, notes clipped to a string above my noggin, so I could visually see something there, or notice it’s absence once it is completed. Because that’s where my to-dos live, hanging over my head.

I started to cry a little during lunch. I can’t eat when I cry, so I cried a little more because I really wanted to eat the leftover Chinese food in front of me.

I sat down the night prior and wrote out things I wanted to do while the kids were in school, to avoid a day like this. I estimated how long the “have-tos” would take, and gawked at the time left over. My mind filled with glorious projects. I did all that to avoid all this. But I knew I would need some time. I honestly imagined I would be a little more emotional than this. I didn’t plan to do anything with anybody that day for this reason. There is, after all, a time to cry. So maybe my lack of direction came from a lack of breakdown.

I envisioned myself sitting down to a nice cup of tea this afternoon after the kids got home, you know, to relax after a hard day’s mindlessness. And because I apparently couldn’t have a stupid cup of tea then, with the house all empty and stuff.

I came to the conclusion that I might need a babysitter. For myself.

I had to write the teacher a letter about Chloe and I avoided it. I was afraid I would slip, and lose this good grip I had maintained, because I easily become overwhelmed with emotion when I sit and stare at a blessing for any amount of time, and as any writer will tell you, when it comes down to it, the only way to successfully communicate the true essence of something is to stare at it a really long time, until you have no choice but to write the truth of it.

Chloe has become a natural at seeking out faces, finding your eyes, making contact in one of the few ways she can. She gazes into my eyes and I wonder, What are you thinking? She will laugh with me when I laugh, she will seek out my face when the dog barks and scares her, her face beginning to melt with the fear. But I can barely bring myself to ask what I need to ask.

I need to look right into her face and ask her, What do you want your teacher to know? What do you wish your classmates knew about you, that you can’t tell them?  I can’t bear to ask because I know I will be answered with silence. The silence is sometimes too heavy. It is what breaks my heart the most, knowing her mind is busy thinking, creating, puzzling, loving, and that I cannot witness it. Theo, my son, rarely stops talking, and though it may start to get to me sometimes, I am always keenly aware of the miracle of it.

Ah. Here it all is, all I have been holding on to all week. I can barely see to keep typing, and I want to stop— stop examining, stop wondering. Stop feeling…what? What is this? It is such a strange mixture of pain and relief and bliss I cannot contain it. Because even though I cannot know just what Chloe’s voice would sound like were the gates opened to all she has had to keep from us these past five years, there is unrelenting evidence to what she is thinking sometimes. Like when she reaches over and puts her hand on the hand of a stranger, and smiles at them. (Hello, new friend.) Or when she squeezes her arms around the neck of an old friend. (I love you, friend.) When she laughs at the wind in her face (I love this feeling!), or even when she laughs after she throws her cup across the table (Crashing is hilarious!).

I mourn what I cannot know. I mourn the loss of something I never had.

What did I write to her teacher, who never imagined that the small request of “tell me what you think I should know about your child” could pose such a heartbreaking conundrum? I wrote many things. But to sum up: just watch. Just watch, and you’ll see, a language you never knew. Chloe is learning, she is hearing, and she is telling you: I’m so happy to be here.

For another post on Chloe’s experience with school, read Super Sister.

What the Heck Do You Do With Your Freedom?

Summer and I don’t always get along so well. It’s hot, and I thrive in the cold. I must keep all the curtains drawn in order to keep out some of the heat, which keeps the house in a state of darkness, and I hunger for light, seeking it out in the night in stars and the moon itself. Add to this a brain that turns to sludge when you release it from the confines of a blessed routine, and it is no wonder that my own darling son has described me as “sleepy cool.”

Theo follows me around, all day, during the summer, talking. He inherited his dad’s gift for gab, and he gabbers all summer long. His range of topics is wide and actually quite interesting. Many times it is downright entertaining. (He once spent twenty minutes on the phone with my sister making her guess the sounds he was making. “What was that one?” “I don’t know.” “I was scratching my fingernail on the window screen.” “Ah.”) As a mom, I have an innate sense of the slipping-away quality of time, so as much as he habitually talks, I habitually listen. I know he won’t always be following me around. That’s not to say it doesn’t ride my nerves every now and then. Fortunately those nerves are rarely exposed until after he goes to bed, at which point Sean usually picks up the conversational slack. I only half-joke that Chloe might never talk because she can’t get a word in edge-wise.

I don’t mind, really. There are a million things boiling in my noggin, but my inability to clearly express them conversationally keeps my mouth shut and my hand moving across the page.  I’ll admit, every now and then, I follow a rabbit trail in my own mind while they are talking to me.  Let’s call this my public apology. (Sorry, boys.) My mind and body forget that they can move of their volition, without permission, or pronouncement, or waiting for the talker across from me to stop and take a breath, or wondering if they’ll follow me to the bathroom, because I really have to pee, and then wondering if that’s really what I want.

So when Theo started tennis camp this week, which lasts only a couple of hours each day, I knew just how I wanted to spend my time. I wrote it in big letters across the lines of my daily to-do list. WRITE! (Yes, I wrote the exclamation point.)

But when I got home from dropping him off, I was hungry. Hungry in a too-much-coffee, not-enough-water on a ninety-degree day hungry. Urgent. Nibbling was not an option. I got a small snack, with full plans to write just as soon as I could. I even sat down in the office, so I wouldn’t be tempted to clean the house. No fooling, forty-five minutes later I was still sitting there, puddling in a heat-induced coma. I am a slow eater, but it does not take that long to eat a cheese stick and a handful of blueberries. I hopped up, steadied myself from said hop, and moved my distracted and heat-wilted body to the desk. I was distracted because I was confused. Time does not belong to me. So when it is handed to me, free of charge, I stare at it like a blurry photograph. What is this? What am I supposed to do with it? I don’t even know what I’m looking at here.

I have discovered this about myself: I need to routinely exercise my freedom. This is the only way time will stay in focus, and I will know just what it is I want to do with any of should it come to me free. I do this in many ways, sometimes when others are home, but in my introverted nature, I usually feel compelled to wait until no one can see me. I dance. In many different and, I am certain, embarrassing ways. (Hips don’t lie, but they do sometimes throw my back out.) I sing at the top of my lungs to whatever Broadway melody I can find in iTunes first.

And. And.  I put on my latest favorites from Spotify, the songs I thoroughly enjoy but don’t quite feel ready to commit to purchasing (we’re still dating), turn the volume to eleven, and I spin, at top speed, in my desk chair. This particular day, hungry as I was, even after my cheese stick and blueberries, I was hugging a giant purply speckled bowl of pasta salad in one arm, while wielding a fork in the other, laughing out loud. I’m pretty sure I emitted more than a single “wheeeee.” Every now and then I had to reverse the direction to keep my inner ear from sloshing around too much. I laughed and wondered what other serious grown-up types secretly spin like a pinwheel in their office chairs. Oh, you know they must.

I should be working, I thought, spearing a tortellini, and pushing my foot off the ground for another go-‘round, hugging the pasta bowl a little tighter to protect my lunch from the forces of physics.

I did finally work for a bit. I thought a bit about freedom and its value, and I could wax philosophical about that for another five hundred words. But, to give you a further glimpse into my life, Theo asked me today to watch him. Drink. His. Milk. (“No, Mom, seriously. Watch. I’m doing it differently.” “I don’t see it, Theo.” “Okay, what if I stand at a different angle? Watch me now.” “Ummm, sure. Look at that.”)