Happy New Year!

We had some ups and downs yesterday as both my kids started school.  All I could do was promise that, whatever problems might arise, we'd solve them together.  It sounds so...

Parents magazinish,  but this mantra seems to satisfy my kids. Fact is,  I am a little more confident navigating the "system" than I was in 2006, when my boy started kindergarten.  But not much more.  As determined as I am to advocate for my children, sometimes, it gives me a stomachache.  An ulcer, to be exact.

So, today was Day 2.  And, for me, that is always the more pivotal moment in this whole transition.  The first day is all about encountering the unknowable--anxiety-provoking, but containing the germ of promise, too.  The second day, the mystery becomes reality.  The germ becomes either a healthy shoot or a raging virus.  

So, I felt tense picking them up at 2:30. I saw my daughter's kindergarten teacher on the playground with them, practicing at lining up and listening, two activities that set my teeth on edge--no matter how necessary they may be in moving groups of small children from one place in a large school to another.  Oh no, I inwardly groaned.  My girl is going to hate all that! (Not because she doesn't know how to do this, or isn't supremely well-behaved, but because she IS.)

Then I remembered how, yesterday, my son actually cried when he saw a teacher he will be encountering this year.  (And I'm not sure this teacher is so "bad" at all, but merely scary, somehow, to him.)

As I walked to meet my children, here's what my inner worrier was saying:  

I will take them both out of school this year if things don't go well.  I will!  We will move to Princeton and I will sell all my stocks to send them to The Waldorf School!  Or I will homeschool!  Or run away with them to Korea, where I will teach English, and they will write Hangul and learn to eat pickled vegetables!  

(Never mind that 1) my wealth in stocks would barely cover the materials fees at Waldorf; 2) I took my kids to the doctor two days before school started simply because I'd run out of ways to entertain them; and, 3) my husband's company doesn't have an office in Korea.)

And then I saw them, and when I asked my daughter how it went, she said, "Good."

And when we met my son, he said he'd had a good day, and smiled.  

And I breathed deeply and said a prayer of thanks to the teachers for the beginning of something good.