Parenthood

The First Day of School


My little girl started kindergarten yesterday. She has been itching to be a kindergartner since her first year in preschool two years ago. I can remember her tears of frustration because the kindergarten students in her multi-age room got to attend writers’ table when she had to go to nap-time. She has always wanted to write. More than she wants to read really. She has filled many a pad of paper with line after line of scribble. When she finally managed to break her preschool teacher down last year and join the kindergarten students at writers’ table, she was so happy. It didn’t last long however. She expected to be able to write, like I do on the ‘puter, instantly and was miffed when she realized that there was work involved. She hasn’t give up though and still practices. Her Grandma Gerry, Rob’s mom, sat with her nearly every day on her last visit, helping Katy with her letters. Chip off the old block. I can remember being in the second grade and teaching myself cursive. I was always in a hurry to be older too. She is so much like me that it never fails to catch me off grade when I see faint hints of her father mixed in and drowning in my DNA.

 

She was a bit apprehensive when we pulled up to the school. So was I, truth be told. I wasn’t sure where to park and Rob had managed to scare me throughly with tales of traffic violations in school zones because it seems that Canadians actually enforce school zone speed limits. Once we were inside, and one of the school secretaries had escorted us to the kindergarten room, things were back on familiar ground. At least for me. Twenty years of teaching have made the rituals of the first day of school practically a reflex even if I am the parent now and not the teacher. 

 

The teacher was “wee” as Jordan would say. I find it interesting that so many of the teachers I have met who teach preschool and kindergarten are themselves quite short. It certainly puts the children at ease. They also have this very young sounding, sing-song voice that little ones love but could very slowly drive an adult insane. She introduced herself, got me going on the paperwork, of which there will be a steady and endless stream until the end of June, and invited Katy to roam and play with anything she took a fancy to. My cautious child spent a good amount of the next ten minutes observing and poking about. She is so like me in the way she stands back and assesses and big-toes the water before jumping in. Unlike me however, when she jumps, she is in. She has her dad’s ability to attract and make friends. It is something I have improved upon with years of trial and error practice, but I am still socially somewhat retarded by my inherent shyness. 

 

A tour of the building followed, and Mrs. Thompson made wonderful use of a variety of hand gestures, signing for the children many of the things she was explaining to them. She wisely took advantage of the tour to point out all the washrooms and drinking fountains and asking the children if anyone needed to make use of either or both each time. And someone always did. When we arrived at the main office, she took the little ones in to meet the vice-principal, leaving us parents to stand awkwardly in the hall to stare at each other. One of the more chatty mothers asked about start and dismissal times and was told that afternoon kindergarten began at 12:19 and ended at 3:12 to which she joked; “ What ever happened to 12:15 or 12:30.” She then proceeded to talk about her high schooler’s classes being 81-minutes in length and asked, “Who thinks this kind of thing up?” Another mother replied that it was just a way that teachers could justify their paychecks. Everyone else nodded and I bit my tongue. Not for the first time either. Just a week earlier I had listened with quiet amazement as mommies picking up their children from the child-minding at the fitness center moan about buying school supplies. One was incensed that she was expected to send a box of pencils to school with her son. “I wrote a note to the teacher saying that I was sending just five and when he was out, she should let me know and I would send 5 more.” I am glad I wasn’t that boy’s teacher. What a pain in the ass that woman must be. I have taught classes of 30 kids or more 6 times a day and can’t imagine having to keep track of the supply levels for 180 children. That, by the way, is the reason supply lists ask for boxes of pencils or reams of paper because teachers can’t keep track of every child’s supply level nor do they have spares enough of everything to give (because children of any age “take” as oppose to “borrow”) to students when they lose things or run out. 

 

At the end of the two hours, we all joined our kids on the alphabet carpet for a story. Katy made sure we sat in the first row. It pleases me to no end to have a child who chooses to sit up front because that is something I never had the confidence in myself to do. 

 

I had to hold back tears more than a few times yesterday. In part, I think, because this is a new school and I don’t know any of the people to whom I am about to entrust my child, but there was a a part of me that marveled at what a big girl she has become. Smart. Well-behaved. Inquisitive. Beautiful. And I did that. I raised her. Which is what hurts. The things that I see in her occasionally that are her father’s, well, they are there by some miracle and not  because he had an opportunity to actively shape her. I try not to let this overshadow important moments like these, but it is always there, back in the far corner of my mind.

Welcome to the World of Stage Parents


During the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (a truly awful affront to die hard Trekkies in the opinion of my husband, and I whole-heartedly concur) there is an episode where Picard and his crew find themselves saddled with the descendants of a group of space colonists after their planet is threatened with solar flares. They come to discover that the expedition that founded this colony had a sister ship that was lost, leading Picard to search for them in hopes of finding a new home for these refugees who are now setting out to settle one of the Enterprise’s landing bays. His search leads them to a planet of clones, descendants, of sorts, of the missing second ship and it’s occupants. The clones are suffering from “replicative fading” and will die out without fresh DNA  infusions into their society which they try to unsuccessfully steal from the Enterprise crew. At the end of the episode, Picard unites the long separated groups after realizing that each can help the other with their problems. The first group  by “loaning” their DNA through reproduction, and the second by offering a new planet to settle on. What I remember the most about this episode is the scene at the very end when it is revealed that the women in both groups will have to engage in polygamous marriages in order to keep inbreeding at bay. Reverse polygamy by the way, not the kind that is so often forced upon females by religious groups as man and harem, but a woman with multiple husbands.

 

This episode came to mind when I was reviewing my present situation. I am a polygamist. I am Rob’s wife, and I am the house’s wife. I know for a fact that I find the former more satisfying than the latter. My relationship with Rob is a give and take, whereas the house takes. Oh, I know that some would argue the house gives too….in its own way. Shelter. Warmth. Safety. But does it have a choice really? What it takes in time, sweat, and Rob…. from me doesn’t make it’s contributions seem as great. In some ways, Rob is more of the house’s bitch than I am. Where it expects near constant cleaning from me, it demands structural upkeep from him that can be downright hazardous. Tonight for example he is replacing the back landing. Masonry needed to be removed as well as framing and floor. While the house passively observes, Rob saws and hammers, dodging exposed nails and his own efforts too judging from the ripped shirt and the bruised elbow he is confident will bring much by way of sympathy and consolation later on. Ah, to be known so well already.

 

I think the house suspects I don’t love it as much as I do Rob. It was an arranged marriage after all, not the love match Rob and I have. I guess it would be hard to live with the knowledge you will always be second best. Still I do my best to give the house what it needs. It should feel better knowing that I clean it more than I ever cleaned the last house I lived in. Truthfully, I have had a deep fondness for this place from the first night I walked in. Disorganized and in as much need of purging as where I was living at the time, it still said “home” to me and welcomed me. Ghosts and all, I knew I would love this place and I do. But like any polygamist, I have my favorite mate and the house will just have to learn to adjust.

Quite Contrary


 

My daughter will tell you, even if you don’t ask, that she is very lucky because she has two dads. Right from the start I emphasized whenever I could with her that we were lucky. We had a daddy in heaven who loved and watched over us and even though that wasn’t always as nice as having one who lived with us, it was still pretty good. When Rob came along and we became engaged, Katy and I would talk about how lucky we were to now have two dads.  That’s not to say that there weren’t tears and sad times. There were and sometimes still are, but I was determined from the start that Katy was not going to grow up feeling as though her life has been ruined or tainted in some way by what happened to her father. I did this as much for Will as I did for her.

 

Will’s father died when he was not quite seven. His father was an alcoholic who fell asleep at the wheel after a night of drinking and drove himself off an embankment near a bridge and into the water. It was Labor Day weekend, and Will could remember the State Police coming to the door and then being sent up to his room. His mother was in her early thirties and his a dad a few years younger. Will was always sketchy on the details of what happened next, but I got the impression that was more of a reluctance rather than an inability to recall. One thing he was never in doubt about was how his mother had set out to instill in him a sense of being different from other kids and other families. Her widowhood marked them for slights and abuse in her view, and she made certain that he never forgot that their lives would have been so much better had his father not died. Once I asked him about that. Would it have been better? Whenever I asked about his father, or his early childhood, I got stories rather than answers. This time I got the story about how his father and his mother’s younger sister had given him alcohol once when his mother was away. She returned to find him quite sick and when she confronted his dad about it ….. well, he had found the whole thing funny. Getting a five year old drunk. Will went on to remark that it wasn’t until years later at a Thanksgiving dinner that his mom’s sister had drunkenly confessed to having had an affair with her brother-in-law during that time period. I guess “better” like most things is a relative term. 

 

Will never felt he was as good as his friends who had two living parents. He thought perhaps that his lack of fathering had made him less of a man. Another legacy from his mother, who constantly decried the lack of male influence in his life. He felt too that the only luck he had was bad luck. When we learned we couldn’t have children without help, he wondered aloud why bad things like this always happened to him. Of course he wasn’t always so pessimistic. He dreamed and had a vision of a future that was surprisingly optimistic, and his early influences receded more and more as we built our life together.

 

When he was in hospice, I made certain that Katy visited often and that our time was as normal as any family. We ate meals there. Me spoon feeding Will and Katy sitting at the foot of his bed eating off the tray the aides would bring for her. We played Candy Land on his bed and watched videos. All the while she thinking this was what families do and what dad’s are like and Will was  curled in a fetal position staring blindly and unknowingly into space right past us both. After he died, I made sure that we didn’t talk about his death as a negative that happened to us. People get sick sometimes, I told her, and they don’t get better. Doctors can’t fix every problem and people go to live in heaven. It makes us sad and daddy sad but we are still a family and we still love each other. 

 

I never blamed his death for anything that happened. If we didn’t have money for something it was because mama hadn’t finished her masters yet but when she did, things would be better. If we had to spend the weekend on our own, we went out and did something together. When other kids at her school had mom’s and dad’s to drop them off in the morning or pick them up at night, well, we didn’t and that was okay and maybe someday we would have a dad too.

 

When Rob came along one of the first things I needed to know was if he was okay with being a father to Katy. He had actually given that a great deal of thought before he even approached me with his feelings for me. Katy, unsurprisingly took to him right away. She’d never had a father in the active sense of the word.

 

About six weeks ago, the two of them planted a garden. Lettuce, potatoes, radishes and carrots. She was thrilled by the entire process though I think the digging and the watering are her favorites parts. Since then we have watched as things have grown and turned that once forlorn space into a garden. Last evening they “harnessed” the lettuce for our supper salad. As I took pictures it occurred to me yet again that this is what families do, and that I have done a pretty good job these last four years.