Push you out the door

I’m dreading taking William to school today. Either Thursday or Friday, I forget which, he pitched this huge fit when I dropped him off. He always turns clingy when we get out of the car—“hold me hold me hold me hold me.” Wonder if he does that with Chris? I generally try to get out of drop-off duty, preferring the happier pick-up moments, when you get big hugs and demonstrations of the day’s art projects. Chris manages the drop-off easier than I do anyhow; one thing I’ve learned being a parent is that sometimes the spouse is better at something than you are. I can’t do shoulder rides at all, and apparently I give terrible baths. But I am really good at letting William “help” me cook. And I am the math homework backup too—pretty unbelievable given my own performance in math, but it’s more a matter of being better able to bite my tongue. Being better at some things means you pay a terrible price: all the drop-offs, or the math homework on a terrible fractions day.

But being better at something doesn’t always mean that’s what you get to do. Because Chris’s class starts at 7:30, which is when daycare opens, I’m on drop-off duty all summer, alas. I’m actually usually better at it in the summer anyhow, because I can take more time to pry Mr. Will off my leg gently. We’ll come in and read a story and play in the water table a minute or look at the new toys—the Glow Worm room trades out toys every couple of weeks, just to keep things fresh. Half the time I end up reading a story to four or five children, all crowded around with Will in the proprietary lap position. This classroom actually has a rocking chair, which is sort of sad and also good—because there is something about sitting on the floor with this pile of kids on top of you. Aside from the fact, of course, of how hard it is to get up off the floor then. But when you have on your good work clothes, sometimes that rocking chair is really handy.

And I have to confess how much simpler it is to manipulate your own kid when you’re surrounded by several others. One of the cherished classroom goodbye routines at this daycare is push-you-out-the-door. Just like it sounds, when you’re all ready to go and have your goodbye kisses and whatnot, your little tot escorts you to the door, steps behind you and pushes you out. Will usually runs out after you for one more kiss and hug too, although I’m not sure if this is an official part of the routine. Laura used to do the same thing when she was a Butterfly. My theory is that the kids feel they are in control of your leaving when they are the ones pushing you out of the room. So when I’m ready to go, if Will isn’t ready yet, all I have to do is ask if Jacob or Peyton wants to push me out the door (which they are always willing to do) before Will’s shoving me out so fast my head is spinning. I know, it’s terrible to manipulate your kids. But everybody does it, and sometimes you just have to get to work.

Part of the weirdness of the drop-off if the “having” to go to work. Almost all us parent as we leave will say “Mommy has to go to work now!” Moms and Dads announce this very brightly, but the implication of course is that work is this terrible place that separates you from your child—and I don’t know, maybe it is. I try to say something like “Time for Mama to go to work!” so it’s not so negative (even though I often feel that way myself about marching off to the salt mines). But when you have to repeat your leaving mantra eight thousand times that makes it rather difficult to avoid having to go. By that time, though, sometimes work feels like an escape—all grownups, most of the time. Nobody twiddling your hair or putting their chocolate fingers on your clean shirt. Quiet time in which you can actually accomplish a task. Sometimes the desire to be at work really makes you wish they’d hurry up and push you out.

Usually the goodbye routine is fun, if a little lengthy. But last week, I was running late—that’s always when the problems hit. I had a long drive before a meeting, and I’d already been delayed at home. Will was playing with Kitty, who scratched him and made him cry, and then when I picked him up to calm him down again, I discovered she’d scratched him enough to make him bleed a tiny bit, which of course I realized when I saw the smear of blood on the very front and center of my shirt. We had to kick Kitty out, take antibacterial boo-boo measures, and change my shirt too. By the time we got to daycare, I didn’t have time for weasling out of the room methods and had to resort to the much less preferred hand-the-kid-off-to-the-teacher. Now generally speaking, the teacher stays close by during your good-byes, but tries not to interfere unless it’s just one of those mornings where Mom or Dad are clearly never going to be able to get out on their own. It’s better for everybody if they do, but if they don’t, a little special teacher snuggling will often do the trick.

But this was a desperate measures morning, and after telling Will that I absolutely had to leave so I could be on time, I tried to hand him to Ms. Amanda. He really has very strong arms and legs. Not convinced that my being on time was important to him, he hung on. A minute more discussion, and then I just had to pry him off and go. This is the worst of the daycare moments: your sweet baby is screaming in a sort of demonic possession way. You are of course the reason he’s demonic in the first place, since clearly anyone who would leave their child in this state must have an office down on the lower-levels of the Inferno. The poor teacher has that set-jaw look that indicates she understands why you’re doing this, but boy, this spectacle sure isn’t getting the day off on the right foot. Generally a teacher or parent wandering down the hall will peek in the glass window to see who’s being murdered, so you almost always have an audience. It’s just miserable.

The standard wisdom in daycare settings is that the kid stops crying by the time you get to the lobby, and everyone is happy and playing again by the time you’re driving out of the parking lot. I’m not convinced about this, particularly with William, who is going through a little stage right now in which he can hold a grudge or remember an insult for quite a while. Since he may possibly have inherited this trait from me, I can easily see him spending the morning howling in despair at his abandonment by his formerly beloved mother. And of course, as I’m driving off to my meeting, an interminable miserable drive in which I hear the echoes of terrible baby screaming, this is what I’m imagining. Finally I called the daycare (which is #3 on my cell phone speed dial, only after Home and Chris cell) and asked if they’d check on Will for me.

One of the reasons I love this daycare is because they always very nicely, without treating you like some blithering idiot, go check on your child. I actually did this with Laura once when she was three herself, because one afternoon at work I simply became convinced something was wrong with her. I’m not psychic, I discovered that day when I finally decided I had to call or else leave work. I kinda thought I’d already known that, but I guess you have to test these theories out. The staff member who handled the psychic parent network phone line that day just went down to see what Laura was doing, asked the teacher how her day had gone, and kindly reported her findings back to me, adding that parents should always trust their intuition, and she was happy to check for me. I wondered afterwards if they had psychic parent-teacher training workshops, she was so smooth. I realized later instead that obviously I was not the first crazed parent to call. After that little episode, I don’t feel nearly as weird calling just to see if my hysterical child has calmed down after being so rudely dumped at school, so about thirty minutes into my drive I called and got the standard reply to such inquiries: he settled down by the time I got to the lobby. I could go to work with a clear conscience.

Next year Will’s classroom is on the front hall of the center, with a big picture window facing the parking lot. That means two goodbyes—one at the door, and then the wave at the window. For years I’ve watched the poor Caterpillar parents walking around the shrubs to that window before heading off to their cars. Most of their kids are smiling and waving, but there’s always that occasional one or two wailing and rending their garments. That mom or dad always looks composed, but you know inside they are shriveling up and dying. And that they probably have a big presentation later that morning. You can only offer them that smile that says, I know, good luck and move on, because it’ll be your turn next week.