It's unfortunate that my daughter chose this year to turn five. It's unfortunate because the divorce, which tripped her up occasionally last year like a pesky throw rug with an upturned corner, is now slamming into her like the sparkling clean glass door that you forget is not actually open. I am pre-teenage daughter mom, and she sulks, and smirks, and stomps. I forget how vulnerable she is until times like last Thursday morning, when she was standing in front of school with a Disney princess backpack dwarfing her, and I was looking at the other kids going through the double doors and wondering if they shouldn't be heading onto the bus that goes to the high school already. I often forget that my daughter is only five and we've shouldered her with two houses and parents who have difficulty speaking to each other without gritting their teeth. I'm reminded when I show up to retrieve her at 2:30 and her eyes are huge and glossy, scanning the chaos of mothers because she fears I won't show up.
Last year I stumbled through the divorce in a bit of stunned disbelief. This year, I know what we did, and I can see what it's doing to her. She awakes at night, not really awake, but eyes open, scanning the room in panic for some unseen threat. And I stumble again, sure that by the age of nineteen, she'll be staked out on some rooftop, picking off people with expert marksmanship. I joke that I've started a therapy fund, so that when she needs someone to blame for all of her misfortune, she can curl up on a plush couch somewhere where the plant leaves aren't tinged with brown and blow her nose on ninety-five dollar-an-hour Kleenex.
I find my peace in hers, so neither of us has been sleeping well. Kindergarten turned out to be a horrifying place. She ate alone at lunch, played by herself at recess, and stood by the fence waiting for me at her after-school program. After four days of tears every morning before school, I looked into other schools, private kindergartens, places where she would feel more secure. Irrationally, part of me even imagined pulling her from kindergarten, waiting a year, even though she already stands a good head above the rest of the kids in her class. If I had to justify it, I could argue that by the time she was a senior in high school, the rest of the class would have caught up with her height-wise.
My boyfriend, a wise, perceptive soul, often makes a soft whoop-whoop sound in times such as these. Helicopter Mom. Swoop and scoop when the going gets too rough for my child. I need to save her from all of this, even though I know that is impossible. Rationally, I know that everyone faces stumbling blocks in childhood that leave us scarred, and most of us resist the urge to go weapons of mass destruction on the general public. Crap happens. Boy, does crap happen. In a perfect world, crap would never happen to our kids. But this is not a perfect world. No matter how hard I swoop, no matter how hard I scoop, I can't change that for her.
We went to open house last night. My daughter proudly led me to the auditorium and swung her cowboy-booted feet back and forth in the air while the principal cracked corny jokes into his headset microphone. We walked to her classroom, and I sat in a tiny chair, knees up to my chin, while I listened in fascination at the sequence of letters that have been reviewed up to this point. She modeled her drumming skills, learned in music class, and played tag in the gym with the other kids, showing how quickly she can stop when someone yells freeze. There is that, but there is also the story today of the boy who called her a baby, and the child who spat on the ground by her feet. I listened over a glass of milk with crackers and cheese, nodding my head sympathetically. I held my hands tightly over the helicopter blades to keep the whoop-whoop at bay, and we saddled up the big, black dog for a walk around the block.
In April, signing my name to the enrollment form, I pictured kindergarten to be this warm and fuzzy world with cookies, and stories, and best friends, and teachers who talk with soft voices and have pretty faces. The reality is not an exact match. Kindergarten, like shit, happens. There are cookies, but sometimes they're stale. There are friends, but sometimes they don't want to sit with you at lunch. And the teachers, despite their best intentions, sometimes don't catch the kid who calls you mean and spits on your foot. Kindergarten is an immensely scary new world, but if I have to be honest, it really seems to have only caused lasting mental trauma to me, not to the five-year old who actually had to attend.
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