And so it begins.

The JC Penny Fall Catalogue showed up on my mother's coffee table today, plaid and tweed draping the toothy models who grace its front cover. Aside from the horrifying discovery that the fashions from the 80's are back in full force, I also realized that my summer is over. On Monday, I will toss my flip flops to the back of my closet, hide my barely tan legs under a long skirt and shove my feet into high heels that feel unbelievably tight. I'm sitting with the same emotions that I usually feel around this time of year. A bit of anxiety (although the standing nude in front of the classroom dreams haven't started yet, thank god!), a bit of excitement (I've seen my class rosters already…there's only one or two kids that I suspect have tortured small animals during childhood), and a bit of bittersweet regret. No matter how much I accomplish every summer, I am left with a lingering certainty that I could have done more.
The emotions for the start of my school year, however, are being suffocated this year by a bigger issue: the start of my daughter's school year, her first official start. This should distress me only because she is growing older and taking her first big girl steps away from me. Kindergarten leads to best friends whose parents I've never met, to sleepovers, secrets, and triumphs and heartaches that I will be no part of. I should be worried only about that moment, that big moment, when I leave her at the classroom door and watch her step through it to a different phase in our life together.
But, as it is with all new parenting adventures, I am entering this phase not only with a ton of maternal anxiety, but also a heaping dose of maternal guilt. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I didn't ask about the academic reputation of her school before enrolling her. It's in our neighborhood, and it had a before and after school childcare program on site. Unfortunately, the before and after school program folded at the end of last year because there weren't enough kids utilizing it. So now, she will have to be bussed after school to one of those horrid daycare facilities (I've seen them…they're horrid). In light of this, I'm wondering if I shouldn't have pushed to get her into one of our district's "better" schools, where the standardized test scores are through the roof, the other parents are addressed as "Dr." or "Honorary", and the need for social services is almost non-existent. As a friend of mine pointed out, Title One doesn't mean Number One.
Unsurprisingly, my mental angst swam up to the surface last night. I dreamt that I left my daughter in the car while I was eating with my family. She was happily munching a McDonald's Happy Meal, and our dog was with her, but I couldn't tell you why I had left her in the car. I could see her from our table, but I got distracted in conversation, and when I looked back, the car was gone, the dog left behind, hunched over, head hanging, as if he knew he had done something bad. Normally that would be bad enough to wake me up, sweating and panting, but the dream continued, and I had to endure the looking for her, the despair of not finding her, the pain of realizing that I'd lost her. Boy, would Freud have a field day with that one (or was he only interested in dreams that involved penises?).
I like dreams whose obviousness requires no interpretation, and that one certainly pointed out how screwy my mind has been. The bottom line is this: I don't care where my daughter goes to college. I would like her to go to college, but I don't really care where. I also don't really care what career she picks after college. I would prefer that I don't have to loan her money when her car breaks down, and that I could go to her house for dinner instead of her never leaving mine. I might insist that whatever she does, it involves all of her articles of clothing firmly in place on her body. But does she have to be upwardly mobile? Only if she wants to be. What I do care about is that she is healthy, physically and mentally. I would like her to be happy and secure with who she is and able to hold satisfying relationships with other happy and secure people. And I suppose, way back in April, that's what I considered when I selected her school.
It's kindergarten for Pete's sake. And at this kindergarten, they learn violin, and they dance, and paint, and mold clay. And while these skills won't guarantee her a slot in Harvard, these aspects of her kindergarten are enough to ease the anxiety that my very clingy five-year old is feeling right now. She's just as nervous as her uptight mother. When we part at the doorway in a week and a half, both of our hearts will be pounding furiously, wishing we could step back and do this whole thing a bit more slowly. The feeling for her will be brief, and, if I've done my job, disappear entirely the minute she makes her first friend. I suspect it will linger a bit longer in me, and I'll spend the first few months doing double takes at my gangly-armed and legged little girl, sighing as I remember how small she used to be, how all mine she used to be.
Now, if you don't mind, I think I would prefer the standing nude in front of the classroom dream tonight. After last night, it should be worth a few giggles.