First Day of School

Who’s more scared? Parents or kids? At a new school for the third time in my child’s life I think it might be a tie. Mom-ita and I drove M-ito to his first day of school last week and I took two days off to be there for the whole first day and for the one hour intro to school the day before. The commute was fine, not to much traffic, but lots of nervousness in the back seat and the front.

Mom-ita cried and I found tears coming to my eyes also as we gave him a hug before he was lead off to his classroom. M-ito’s first day was well planned out by the school he’s going to. They welcomed new students by name, with a handshake and gift from an upper classperson, in a morning assembly that all parents were invited to. We ate lunch with our kids then took off and did some food shopping while we waited. It was something to do. It was a day of waiting and of reflecting and shopping was a nice concrete something to do. We had about four hours to wait – on and off during – that first day in between meeting his teacher, seeing his classroom, being told by school administrative staff and the headmaster that “everything will be okay,” over and over again. Sure – easy for them to say.

I was surprised at how strongly I felt about sending him to school. This was truly the summer of transition from one school to another, from one set of friends to another, and for us as parents from one set of parents whose kids M-ito knows, to another. We are in the midst of meeting all these new parents, just as M-ito is in the midst of meeting all these new kids. Each of us is having to manage new relationships like crazy. I have to put my hand and my “self” out a lot. I have to say hello and introduce myself, try to remember which kids are which and which go with which parents. Mom-ita has been doing it all summer and I’m still catching up. Now I’m putting faces to names I’ve heard and trying assign kids to them.

What has caught me a little more by surprise than these difficulties is how watching my son go to school has reminded me of my own going to school when I was his age. It has brought up deep feelings of loss and sadness for what was. I changed schools and homes when I was going into fourth grade, M-ito is changing schools in 2nd. I remember leaving people behind and meeting new kids, best friends-to-be, none of which I’m still in touch with or becuase they have died long ago. I remember getting a new father and house to live in. I can feel this viscerally, in the tingling in my fingers as I type away. What a mix. Seeing this kind of history spread out in front of my son overwhelms me. But it’s my past not his.

At lunch after the assembly my son came over to me, so that Mom-ita wouldn’t be able to hear, and said, “I want to go home.”

I looked at him with my heart breaking. “Can you last for a few more hours?” I asked him, looking deeply into those brown eyes of his.

“How many hours is that?” he asked.

“Two.”

Then he nodded and hugged me. I didn’t tell Mom-ita about this until later.

When we came back to pick him up at three o’clock he was happy and seemed fine. He’d had science last period and he loves science and so his whole experience was framed by what he did there. His teacher had told them to pick a kind of scientist they would like to be – M-ito said paleontologist, of course – and to draw a picture of one on the front cover of their science notebook.

From the back seat of the car M-ito said, “I tried to be small in the class, but they wouldn’t let me be.” Mom-ita smiled while I drove. In his last school M-ito could “be small” and not noticed – not get attention – if he was quiet and followed the rules. He could “dissapear” if he wanted to – which I think he did a lot. In this school they introduced the kids to each other, asked them to play games with each other in recess (stopping cliques from arising – or at least attempting to) and seemed to try and notice what kids were doing and not doing. Small classes, good teachers. So far so good. But it meant that M-ito had to be more social than he was used to being. He is a shy kid who takes time to warm up. He must have been exhausted from all that kind of work. I know I was. I said hello and shook many hands in the parent meetings, at the coffee shop where I saw more of the same parents hanging out – just like us – and when we picked M-ito up. I had to force myself. I learned new names and forget them all within a matter of moments. Still, it’s part of the job of a parent. At 47 I have to tell you it’s not easy to go out and make new friends. I don’t necessarily want to put in that kind of effort but it comes with the territory. I guess I like to “be small” too.

After not talking about school for a few hours – even though we pestered M-ito left and right about what he did, at dinner time he finally gave us the whole run-down.

His second day I went to work with a knot in my stomach.

It’s his third day today, this beautiful Monday morning, and his first whole week of school. I’m doing my deep breathing exercises, trying to stay present, and not slip into the past. Mom-ita and M-ito left 45 minutes ago. I’m heading out too. I find I have to remind myself, this is his school experience, not mine. And this is my parenting experience, not his. The idea, I think, is to try to keep things that way. The challenge is in making it so.

Dinos in a Galaxy Far Far Away

“Dadidito, I don’t like dinosaurs so much anymore.” It was an innocent comment made while we were walking to school one morning in the freezing cold. “I like Star Wars more.” We’d been going through three months plus of Star Wars movies and Legos models and books and questions like, “Is Star Wars real? Are Jedi’s real? Is there such a thing as the force?”

My answers, in order, “Could be. Could be. And I like to think so.” All followed up with, “Remember. It’s in a galaxy far, far away.” 

M-ito usually nods at that as if it explained everything. For once I don’t elaborate. Mom-ita watches me sometimes when M-ito asks me questions like this and just laughs when I go into a big big explanation when all M-ito wants is a simple answer. It reminds me of an old joke. A young boy goes up to his father and asks, “Where did I come from?” And the father sighs and says to himself, “I knew this was coming.” So he gets out a thick health text book with and flip charts of the human body with anatomically correct parts and starts to describe the whole process of reproduction. Half an hour later, when he’s finished, he looks at his son and asks, “Did I answer your question?” And his son says, “I thought I was born in Brooklyn.”

So hearing my son say he didn’t like dinosaurs (getting back to the dinos) my heart sank into the floor. I had seen this coming since the summer and fall as he’d switched gears from claw and tooth to light saber  and the the force – my son was moving on. I nodded while we walked in the cold, our cheeks red and our noses frozen. And so the dinosaurs became extinct. Or so I thought. 

Two weeks later we’re at the doctors – M-to’s, not ours – for his annual check-up. The doctor asks him, “Do you still like dinosaurs?” And he tells her without hesitation, “I still want to be a paleontologist.” 

She smiles at him and says, “Oh, good. I’m glad you still like them.”

M-ito looks at me and Mom-ita, both of us slightly surprised, a little confused, and quite possible a little relieved.

Who knows. There are probably dinosaurs in a galaxy far far away.

Dino-opoly

When did it happen?

Three months ago Dino-opoly was boring. It was too difficult to count all the dollars, keep track of the properties, count the numbers on the dice and the spaces to move forward. The games biggest attraction has always been the images of dinosaurs that cover the board, the bones that are used for houses, and the chance cards that ask questions about dinosaurs – which M-ito can answer.

“What period did Tyranosourus live?” I ask.

“Creteceous,” he replies.

Basically the half a dozen times we’ve played the game (he’s had it since he was four) I did all the banking, paid all the bills, moved the counters, made the decisions, and … counted the numbers on the dice. Okay, I know that’s a bit much and I should be patient and wait for him to do these things for himself – how else is he going to learn? But after the first half hour of the slowest game in world history inching forward from space to space – getting distracted by other toys near and far to say nothing of mild air currents, a booger in his nose, and the smell of an old sock – even the most patient man (which I’m not) would have started doing for rather than watching do.

Now, my son is almost 6 – almost. He can count to one hundred, by ones, fives, and tens.  We played today. He counted the dots on the dice quick enough – though still one at a time – made all his own decisions about the game when I laid them out for him, and when I told him what to pay he counted out his own money.

He bankrupted me in an hour and a half.

Liopleurodon on the Loose

M-ito’s friends Noito and Celito’s grandmother has died. It’s just past one year since M-ito’s Gran has died and we can all feel the echo.

M-ito asks me, “Dad-dito, do you believe you were an animal when you were alive before?”

“What do you mean?” I ask. We’re sitting at M and V’s eating egg sandwiches.

“Well… do you believe we were alive as other animals and creatures before we were humans?”

“A lot of people believe that,” I say.

“But do you believe it?”

“Yes, I do,” I say. “You’ll have to ask Mom-ita to see if she does – but I don’t think she does. Me, I believe that, when we die, our soul or spirit is reborn sas another person or creature depending on what kind of life we lived. If we live a good life, are kind to others, treat people well, we come back as better people. If we don’t we come back as not-so-nice people or unpleasant creatures. That’s called karma.”

“I don’t really want to know about karma.”

“Okay.” We eat for a while and stare out the big window looking out over 37th Avenue. It’s cold out and a few snow flakes drift by. 

“I think,” M-ito says, “that I was a liopleurodon during the dinosaur times and that’s why I’m so good at swimming now.”

I nod, realization dawning on me. “I bet you were.”

M-ito smiles and takes a bite of his sandwich, a modern day liopleurodon snacking on eggs, cheese, bacon, and sesame bagel with a side of orange juice. 

Paleontologist Tools

I’m in Dallas on a Business trip. Mom-ita tells me on the phone that earlier, while M-ito was ’supposed’ to be falling asleep, he sat up in bed and asked her, in all seriousness, “Mom-ita, when I grow up and am being a paleontologist, where will I get the things I need to be a paleontologist, like, I mean, shovels and things like that? You know, grown-up shovels…?”

Mom-ita said, “After I explained to him that he’d probably work for a school that could provide all that, he was not reassured, and kept asking where, oh where, would he get these things?”

“What did you say?” I ask, looking out of the hotel window’s 23rd floor view of downtown Dallas, feeling very alone and left out of things.

“I told him that we should ask Den-ito (Artina’s father), because he knows all about tools and things like that, and where to get them.”

Tools are not my thing so I let my chin fall to my chest and nod. “Did that work?” I ask.

“This calmed him down and he went to sleep,” she says.

“I’m glad.”

Later that night, when I couldn’t get to sleep because I was anxious about the trainings I would have to do in the morning for 100 drug court coordinators from all over the country, I got out of bed and threw my feet up against the wall in an inversion – took twenty deep breaths – a sleep trick from yoga practice. I thought it was funny, him not wanting to go to sleep, me not able to. In a strange way, it made me feel closer to him. And that’s a good thing, always.

Spike?

Okay. Spike is the name of one of the dinosaurs in the Land Before Time series. He’s a stegosaurous and though not very bright, he’s very lovable, and a good friend to his buddies.

Spike is also the name of the little chick, the Peep in her Pocket, in a Junie B. Jones book. That spike will one day be a rooster.

Sometimes you have to search for meaning in M-itoisms.

Nope, Too Scary

I’m trying to understand this. Why is it that M-ito is afraid to watch movies like Over the Hedge (he lasted only five minutes into the film), and Flushed Away (he lasted seven minutes thirty-two seconds), but can watch Chased by Dinosaurs and Walking with Dinosaurs? If you’ve seen any of these four movies/videos you’ll know that Hedge and Flushes are animated cartoons that are soft PG with action scenes that are scary to kids of the 6 and under set. You’ll also know that the Dinosaurs films are highly realistic CGI effects laden films about prehistoric creatures that eat each other. They eat each other. Gulp. They scare me. But M-ito is fascinated by dinosaurs so he watches these movies and, although he’s scared, he sits next to me and weathers them. He is a very determined boy.

Since he was two he said he wanted to be a paleontologist. It’s his job of choice, followed by animal rescuer and marine biologist, for four years running – and yes, he could say paleontologist at two and knew what it meant. He could also say correctly the names of over a dozen different dinosaurs – pachecephalosaurous being my favorite to hear. We keep waiting for him to get tired of dinosaurs but he doesn’t. He simply finds new interests in them. He doesn’t play with his plastic dinosaurs the way he used to – he used to line the living room floor with a giant herd of them, all kinds, all sizes, then keep them there for days as they rumbled and roared across the valley and into the bedroom. I could hear their voices echo. Now the plastics are silent but the card games and dino-opoly are ruling playtime. He also reads book after book after book about them.

Fortunately for me, I like dinosaurs too. It makes the Museum of Natural History a good place to go in the cold weather.

But I’m still jones-ing to watch Flushed Away and Over the Hedge.

“Nope, too scary,” M-ito says when I ask if he wants to watch either of them. Mom-ita rolls her eyes at me and shakes her head. What’s a Dad-dito to do?