Today was Little Girl’s first day of “school.” Not only did I send her to preschool way before I’d planned (by which I mean: at all), but it’s at a church. A Baptist church. A Southern Baptist church in South Carolina. And it’s a super-religious program, too. All their little library’s books are about Jesus. They teach the shapes thusly: The Trinity is a triangle! The Bible is a rectangle!
And that’s okay. Eight six-hour weeks of religion at age two isn’t going to ruin her for rationality. And you know what it will do? It will introduce her to new buddies, as she pines for her old ones. It will give me some time to do my work-from-home gig, as I’m getting tired of squeezing that in between her bedtime and mine. It will keep her more productively occupied than I’ve often been up for lately, as they don’t show videos (more on that later). And it’s biking-distance! Cheap! And the people are very nice. And if Little Girl starts wanting us to take a moment to consider our good fortune before meals I think that’s probably a very good idea.
I teared up walking her into the room, and felt very sad as she clung to me when I made to leave and told me she was “gonna be sad, Mama!” But when I left she was doing a puzzle, only a little morose. And when I picked her up–”Mama come back!”–she greeted me, then went back to the toys. She hasn’t been especially forthcoming about what she did today, but I did get “I like my buddies!” and that’s just great.
In an impressively skillful bit of scheduling, I interviewed for the university teaching position off-island during “school” (sorry, I can only use ironic quotation marks when using that word for a two-year-old), and it went very, very satisfactorily. And that’s great, too.
(I was all worked up about how I had to be off-island for her first day of “school”, so pinned to her backpack is a very complex note for the teacher involving neighbors’ numbers and schedules. I also interrogated the teacher afterwards about activities and emotions, which none of the other mothers did, so I hope I don’t come off as neurotic as I, uh, guess I evidently am.)
