I fall in love too easily, I fall in love too fast

When I was single, I was constantly finding a new object of affection and recklessly, prematurely falling for them. I’m just that kind of an impulsive girl who likes to give her heart away easy. I don’t recommend it and I sure as hell don’t wish it for my own kids, who I’d like to assess a potential partner for half a decade before so much as holding their hand. Thankfully, now I’m married and the only person I want to date – and then, only sometimes – is David. But I still have a tendency to fall too easily, too fast, though not in the romantic sense. Now I have a tendency to fall for experts charged with the enormous responsibility of caring for my children, usually doctors and teachers, but sometimes even lunch ladies and CCD instructors – anyone, basically, who does something decent for my kids when I’m not there. September is an action-packed month for my heart in this respect and this September has been no different.

I should qualify that I don’t always fall in love. Sometimes, I fall into loathing. It goes one of two ways: either I’m immediately smitten and the teacher’s the Absolute Best, the Non-Pareil or I’m immediately discouraged and concerned and the teacher is the Absolute Worst, the Bottom of the Barrel. Rarely, I stumble upon teachers about whom I have no immediate opinion, who are later revealed to be Just OK.

Last year, I blogged about how much I loved Primo’s first grade teacher Jennifer and how I would have liked nothing more than to lock her into a contract whereby she would be our family’s educator ‘til the kids go off to college. And I feel a little like I’m cheating on her here but I have to admit I’m head over heels for Marie, his second grade teacher now. I know it’s a little reckless of me to judge someone’s character so quickly but I can’t help it.

When I read the welcome letter that arrived in August, I was optimistic, very optimistic. I loved the way she double-sided the letter and how savvy she was about formatting so that important info was highlighted with boxes and checkmarks. That shit shows devotion.

When I heard from one of Primo’s friends that his first grade teacher Jennifer had given her seal of approval on the new teach, apparently widening her eyes and gasping with excitement, before saying “Oh she’s wooooonderful!” – I began to wax rhapsodic out loud, to my husband. I had never met her but any friend of The Best Teacher Ever was a friend of ours.

So when Marie gave Primo a special three-sided pencil to help him perfect his grip on the second day of school and then offered to send one home as well, the deal was sealed. I loved her, irrevocably and unconditionally, forevermore. And when Primo said she made a homemade batch of Snickerdoodles for the class FOR NO REASON, I wrote a theme song for her. When I showed up at the curriculum conference, hoping upon hope she might provide some coffee and found not only steaming Starbucks but a heaping platter of homemade currant scones, my heart was whipped into a frenzy of love and gratitude that had me drafting gushy mushy thank-you emails to her in my head while she talked – dear woman – about how in her class, they’d do poetry every day, because if there are two words that should never go together its “poetry” and “unit.”

Marie is now the teacher to beat. In fact, she is such a superstar standout that it almost makes me uneasy, because I know next year, no matter who we get, it will be a crushing blow. It pains me to think of how far we will fall. But, the great news is, since I now have a younger child in the school, I have another shot at second grade with Marie. Its reason enough to keep procreating.

Its so hard to say goodbye . . . to your first grade teacher

I loved Primo’s first grade teacher. Jennifer, from the moment I read her inaugural “welcome to first grade” email sent before the start of school. There was a letter to read to the kids and a letter for the parents to read and the tone was warm and convivial, with tons of detailed information about how the first day would go down. I am a detail junkie, so this wealth of information made my heart go pitter patter. Then we met her, and she was even sweeter than she’d seemed, while being utterly in control of the classroom. Firm but fair. Consistent but kind. As I walked out of school after drop off on the first day, I said to David, “She’s good, isn’t she? Like really good, right? Do you love her? I think she’s the world’s best teacher. I’ve never met a teacher as fantastic as her.” And on that first day of school, I began to panic about how we’d have to say goodbye to her in less than a year’s time.

Maybe it was because Primo had such a colossally awful kindergarten teacher, and such a shitty kindergarten experience, that I was primed to swoon at the first show of competence. And maybe it was the fact that we’ve now experienced such polar extremes of the teacher spectrum, which makes me nervous about what next year holds in store. Whatever the reason, I’m already tearing up.

Its so difficult to surrender control of your kids in the first place and when you have concerns, whether they’re nagging fears or balls-out panic attacks, about the people charged to care for them, it’s an awful feeling. But conversely, nothing feels as good as saying goodbye to your kid and being suffused with the assurance that he’s in good hands, and that he KNOWS he is in good hands. Nothing feels as good as relinquishing your child to someone to whom he goes willingly, who will care for his emotional, intellectual and physical needs, probably more capably than you can, because there isn’t as much passion clouding the picture.

When I think about my own favorite elementary school teachers, I don’t remember being as attached to any one of them as I am to Primo’s. Which makes sense, really, when you think about it. I mean, I loved Marisa Mule, who taught me Kindergarten and I still remember her Wonder-Woman-style mane of wavy black hair and that raspy, Brooklyn accent that was so comforting, but all Marisa Mule could give me was a feeling of security, delight, curiosity. I bet it was my mother who really felt the blow when they had to part ways because to my mother she gave peace of mind.

The value of peace of mind is something I could never have imagined in my before-kids lifetime. Back then, believe or not, I wasn’t a strung-out neurotic and consequently, I had no understanding of what relief from anxiety means. Now, of course, I’m insanely grateful for a few dregs of peace of mind to give me a break from aging before my time. Every day, I want to hire a skywriter that says, “ I HEART YOU JENNIFER, FOREVER! THANK YOU FOR STAVING OFF MY BLEEDING ULCER! LETS NEVER PART!!”

I wish there was a way we could get her to commit to being my children’s educator from this point forward, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer in sickness and in health, ‘til college do they part.

Since this is impossible, I’ll have to just focus my energy on trying not to break into hysterical sobs when I pick Primo up on the last day of school, like I did when I said goodbye to the dreamboat teachers who taught him in his first-ever year of nursery school. Its just not a good example to set for the kids.

Dreamboat Teacher

Primo’s first-grade teacher is a dreamboat and I have succumbed to full-fledged love for her. She did – and this is a fact – hang the moon. I want to give this woman a Staples gift card worth $100K. When she leads the class out for dismissal, I want to scream in adulation like teenyboppers did at Beatles concerts in the 1960s. After a rocky year in Kindergarten, she has laid the groundwork for Primo to have a fantastic first grade, and for this I am eternally grateful. She somehow manages to be warm and friendly and fun while demanding respect and lawfulness in the classroom She doesn’t abide no fools and she makes those kids work hard but she also showers them with compliments when they deliver, and then rewards them for their hard work. She celebrates the kids for who they are. And her hair is preternaturally bouncy. She is (sigh) just dreamy.

Of course all of these attributes would be meaningless to me if she didn’t understand how cool my kid is. But she does, she gets it. So parent-teacher conferences were great because it was essentially like me winning 15 minutes with my favorite rock star, to talk about my favorite subject ever. But in the middle of the conference, it almost all went terribly wrong.

The kids are writing stories about small moments in their lives, and Jennifer was reading some of the stories Primo’s been writing. If I was helping Primo brainstorm possible subjects, the list would include: “Going for a midnight dip on Ferragosto,” “Getting caught in a big rainstorm,” “Having a tea party with cousins.” Instead, for his first story, he chose to write about how Sec pretended she was going to fall off the balcony. I found this choice of subject matter strange for a number of reasons but mostly because it was a highly uneventful moment – Sec basically just sat on the balcony and said to him, “I’m going to say. ”Oh no! I’m going to fall off the balcony!” and you say “No! Don’t!” OK? OK?” Then I told them that was a lousy game and they should stop. But he told the story somewhat differently:

“One day Sec almst Fel! Off! The! Balkany!” it begins. His illustrations show me, eyebrows angled down like an arch-villain, shouting “NO!” and Primo yelling “STOP!” It is a very gripping story.

As Jennifer reads it aloud to us, I really want to explain that this isn’t what happened so she knows that I am not the sort of mom which would be too busy to notice her child almost falling off the balcony, but then I think that’ll sound like I’m protesting too much and anyway, she must know that the kids take poetic license with these “true” stories.

Then we move on to another story he has written about when he was little in Italy and fell in a piazza and scraped his face.

“One day I wos litl and I wos rning in the peaza and oh no! I fll! Dere was blod! Mamy gav me a banddad.”

Jennifer read this and David and I were smiling, so proud, so delighted. Then her voice halted suddenly and we looked at the words she was supposed to read next.

“Fac you Mamy!”

I gasped. David choked. Jennifer said, “Oh!” stuttering to recover, “oh, I don’t think that says what we think it says.”

And I say, “Because it looks like Fuck you Mommy!”

“Yeah, I don’t know what it is . . . “

Instantly, I am cursing myself for cursing so much at home, thinking that finally, my trucker mouth has rubbed off on that sweet child, imagining the days of detention ahead, when David exclaims:

“No! It’s supposed to be a “th”! He gets “Th” and “F” confused! It’s “Thank you Mommy!”

Huge communal sigh of relief. We all laugh. Then Jennifer jokes. “That’s a good thing, because between his sister almost falling off the balcony and Fuck You Mommy, I was starting to worry.”

Yeah, she’s funny, too. Sigh. For Christmas, I’m thinking about buying her a pony.

Don't know much about history . . .

“Did you know that New York was really bad in the 70s?” said Primo this morning as I was making his lunch.

I don’t know about your six year-old but mine has never before referred to a decade with such breezy authoritativeness. His historical perspective doesn’t have that level of specificity, where it can hone in on a decade at a time. Usually the periods in history he refers to are vast, like “ancient times” or “revolutionary war times” or “when Nonnie was a little girl” – and sometimes he thinks all three of those periods happened at the same time. So, this casual cocktail party talk about “New York in the 70s” was a departure.

“New York was really bad in the 70s?” I repeated: “In what way?”

“There was a lot of garbage on the street.”

This is why it’s good to ask leading questions of your child, rather than reply to their vague questions right off the bat. I was about to launch into a speech about how Bronx was burning, while he was just imagining a bad case of litter.

“Yes, I’ve heard,” I said, “Who told you that?”

“Mark, from school,” he said.

Ah, yes, it all makes sense. I’ve found you can always tell which kids have older siblings by how much they know about history. The other day, we were having a playdate with one of his friends from school, and he was chatting on and on about Hitler. Guess whose fifth grade sister had just finished a report on World War II?

I’d rather have a talk with my first grader about New York in the 70s than Hitler any day.

“Not only was there garbage in the streets,” I said, “But you should have SEEN what people wore. Have you heard of bellbottoms?”

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.