First day of school! Pop the champagne! We made it!

I love summer, really I do, but I have been hanging on to my sanity by the skin of my TEETH, waiting with what I'd call a saint-like patience for the first day of school. You know how you feel when you're 40 weeks pregnant and you are convinced that you will never, ever go into labor? You know, realistically, that there has never, not even once, been a case of a baby staying forever in the womb, just chillin' in there, taking his first steps in your uterus and leaning how to talk while attached to his umbilical cord, yet despite knowing this, you are certain that precisely this sceanrio will ensue. Your pregnancy will be permanent.

This is how I've felt the past two or so weeks. Right about the time camp ended. I understood on a logical level that public school would start at some point. I even knew the date. Still I harbored an irrational fear that the department of Ed would be disbanded or fall would refuse to come like in some ancient Greek myth and I would be stuck in summer break purgatory.

The extra week off really put me over the edge. It might not seem like much - five measly days - but those days have stretched, each one comprising roughly 50 hours rather than 24. With camp a distant memory and child care an impossible dream, I settled on working for a measly hour or two a day, during which time my poor, martyr grandmother watched the kids. By "watched" what I mean is,  housed them on her couch while they watched TV on demand and the baby napped. Consequently, thanks to near-toxic levels of screen time, the kids' brains are at 10% capacity. Good luck getting back into the rigors of school work, guys.

But, now, finally, the first day of school is upon us. Backpacks have been labeled, forms have been signed, supplies have been purchased, new outfits have been laid out. There's hope that the damage to my personality and mental hygiene can be reversed, that I may become a sane and friendly human being again, within a few days. One can only hope.

Start of School Blues

I am always over joyed when its Back To School Time: if you've been reading this blog, you'll have heard of little else but how I've been counting down the minutes til the first day. But I also realize that all of September and much of October, probably, will be a big old bust as my transition-averse children get acclimated to their new class teacher, and routine. I have heard tell of children who actually enjoy starting the new school year, are actually chomping at the bit to get started, relish the prospect of making new friends, discovering how the new system works, all that jazz. I'm sure these children do exist. In fact, it is a distinct possibility that I was one of these students.

Now that I think about it, I remember the summer before freshman year of college started and I got a letter giving me the name and phone number of the girl I'd soon be roommates with. I called her that night, so cheery and full of perky pep, I'm not sure she could make out my high-frequency squeaks. In the first minute or two of our phone convo, I listed all my main interests, my background, my aspirations. She said little to nothing, being the dark, brooding poetry-writing type. We would go on to become best friends, an unlikely pair. She told me later, though, that she was at first mortified by my cheery friendliness and after she met me, on the first day of school, she wrote a poem about the horrifying experience. She sat on her extra-long twin bed with a sulky experience on her face, since she'd had to part with her long-term boyfriend who went to NYU, while her mom helped her unpack a few small suitcases. Meanwhile, my mother had put on surgical gloves and was scrubbing Clorox over every surface of my side of the room, my father was drilling screws into the wall to affix power strips for my mammoth IBM desktop computer (remember how massive they used to be?) and using insane amounts of electrical tape to tie all the cords together. My 7 year-old sister played hide and go seek in the closets. And I set about covering every inch of the room with posters and photographs, all the while chatting with her -- ok, AT her -- about what we wanted to major in, what kind of clubs we might join, if she had gone on any orientation trips. I was nervous, sure, but the main thing I felt was excitement.

I am fairly certain I would not feel the same way today. Somehow, over the years, I've become gradually more neurotic, acerbic and skeptical. Not sure when it occurred exactly, but now I am more Woody Allen than Pollyanna. Unsurprisingly, my kids are the same way. They are always assuming they'll get the worst teacher, end up in class with the worst bullies, have the hardest homework, get the fuzziest end of the lollipop. And it takes until Halloween for them to either confirm that this did, in fact, happen or to discern that they've dodged the bullet -- this time at least.

Poor Seconda began preK in the big public school where her brother's been for the past two years, and while this is fantastic for me and my checking account, it does take a bit of getting used to on her part. There is nap time which is nothing short of a nightmare for Sec, who hasn't napped literally since she was 2 years old, and who is constitutionally incapable of quiet contemplation. There are lots of organized activities which comes as a jarring surprise after her Montessori, self-directed days of free time. And there's lots of new kids, which she assumes are rivals until they are proven otherwise. I'm guessing she'll be acclimating until Christmastime.

But, regardless of how cranky and non-compliant they may be after a long day of adjusting to school, I still get SIX HOURS of kid-free time to work. Which is sublime. So I'll happily accept the start-of-school blues as the price tag. No argument.

First Day of First Grade

Primo starts first grade today. This is a big deal to him because it is the first of the grades. In his opinion, kindergarten didn’t count.

All last year when people asked him, “What grade are you in?” he replied, “I’m not in a grade. I’m in a garten.”

Now, both he and I are both spared the strange looks we used to get in response to his reply, because he can simply say “First.” That, already, will be an improvement.

Big changes happen in my son’s school when kids enter first grade. Parents no longer accompany students into the classroom and help get them settled in. Now, Primo will be dropped at the front door, with several hundred other big kids. First graders don’t eat lunch in their classrooms or have recess in the small front yard, with just their classmates and with their teacher supervising. Now, Primo will have lunch in the cafeteria and recess in the big, back playground with the whole first grade and a half-dozen aides trying to keep order. He’s a big kid, and this is what big kids do.

The new backpack is hanging on its hook, with his name written in permanent marker on the front.

The new, matching lunch bag contains his favorite lunch and a vanilla wafer.

The bag containing over a hundred-dollar’s worth of school supplies specified by his teacher (and that’s just the mandatory ones, not counting the “Wish list” items – who knew flet-top pens cost so much money?) is waiting by the door.

We are all systems go.

Cross your fingers that neither of us sheds a tear at drop-off.

Labor Day: or someone save me from these maniacs I birthed

I’ll be honest and share that not only have I no flipping idea what Labor Day commemorates, but I’m so uninterested that I’m not even going to google it now.

I’ll continue being honest and say that I DO, however, understand what Labor is, and have, ever since I went through the most literal definition of it five and a half years ago. That labor took about nineteen hours, and at the end of it, I had one stunning, spectacular specimen of boyhood. If necessary – and let’s thank God its not – I’d totally endure an hour or two of that labor every day to have my boy and girl with me, snuggled tight for bedtime stories. Hell, I’d even go through transition daily if necessary, as long as I could have an epidural with it. These kids are worth it.

But, I’ll pursue this honesty policy further and tell you that the work it takes to mother them literally boggles my mind. I’m not precisely certain what it means to ”boggle” a mind but if it entails shooting pain in the brain between the eyes and a throbbing in the lobes, well, that’s what I’ve got these last two weeks of summer.

Summer was NEVER this long when I was a kid. No friggin’ way. These summers get more and more endless every year, and more intense, The kids get bigger, the apartment gets smaller, the temperature gets hotter and the kids get bored-er and whiny-er than ever before in history.

My kids have been out of school for only two and a half months but since camp ended at the beginning of August, every day has felt like a week. Since we got back from Italy, every day has seemed like a friggin’ month. I can only guess that tomorrow and the Thursday and Friday which we have off for the Jewish Holidays will feel like a year. A really cranky year.

And I know it’s not just me. Every mother I’ve run into this past week has echoed these sentiments exactly, even the ones who are exquisitely composed and never lose it with their kids. I have a friend who is a psychologist and has three kids whom she treats with the utmost respect, even when she’s disciplining them. After I see her and her kids, I think to myself, “Why can’t I be more like THAT?” One time, her phone accidentally called my phone and left a super-long message which was just the sound of footsteps and her sweet voice talking to the kids as they walked to somebody’s birthday party. And I listened to the WHOLE thing, for almost 10 minutes, hoping that I’d catch this mom screaming bloody murder or calling the kids “shitty little brats” or something, anything, which would make me feel better. She was impeccable, the whole time. It was wildly demoralizing.

But over the weekend, I ran into her in the playground and she said to me, “I am gonna kill these kids! They’ve been like animals. I can’t wait til they go back to school.”

I have loved having whole days with the kids so we can go to the museum, and check out the new fancy playground on the Lower East Side and get bento boxes for lunch. It’s been swell. But I’ll tell you one thing: this Wednesday, it will be with a heart full of joy that I escort Primo to his first day of school. Kids need to learn. And parents need a freaking break.

Happy Labor Day, and even happier End-of-Labors Wedneday.

The K Word

There’s an elephant in the room readers. I think you know what. It’s the second week in September. My son will be turning 5 this year. The elephant in the room is

Kindergarten.

It’s happening. This week. Lord help us.

“So I hear you’re starting school next week,” said my cousin to Primo.

“Yes,” he replied, “I’m a nervous rex.”

“Don’t you mean nervous wreck?”

No, he informed her. A Nervous Rex. It’s a Garbage Pail Kid.

I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you, guys. The kid’s not happy at all. He does not want to go. He’s panicking. I don’t know what he thinks happens in Kindergarten but it must be bad because he will sing loudly to blare out the sound of the word whenever I mention it to him.

“It will be just like your old school for the most part,” I reassure him, “You’ll have a cubby where you put your stuff and there will be colored pencils and crayons and Legos and blocks. I think you’ll like Kinder—“

“JOHN JINGLE HEIMER SCHMIDT!” he yells.

So I bought him a special lunchbox with aliens on it and a new spooky T-shirt for his first day and I stocked up on his favorite monster action figures so my bribery arsenal would be full.

On the bright side, he’ll have a good friend in his class with him. “A childhood friend,” I told someone the other day. They laughed. He is, of course, still a child. But it’s Kindergarten, man, public school, the big leagues. My baby will have to wipe his own butt. God, time flies.