That is That

When I was a little girl, I boycotted pre-school. It was 1974 and pre-school was rare: mine was in a suburb of San Francisco, a Montessori school and a hippie start-up at that. I churned butter like a butter-churning fool there and rarely touched the "learning tools" but I made lots of friends (who's hair I might have trimmed? sorry) and I was having a helluva time.

I can't remember why I quit. I have no idea. But my mother has a theory: she told me every morning what she would be doing that three hours while we were apart. It was always something like "I am going to a League of Women Voters meeting honey and then I coming to pick you up!" My mom thinks I was pissed to be left out. My mom is sure that some part of my five year old self was convinced that what she was doing? It was way better than what I was doing.

I was churning butter all day and hairdressing (?) and my mom was out there making the world a better place! I was insanely stubborn and a drop-out, so my mother decided to drag me through each of part of her mostly boring daily rituals -- making a world a better place while doing laundry and washing dishes and grocery shopping and errand running.

My mom thought my boycott would last one week. It lasted three months. THREE MONTHS. Twice she tried to force me back to school. Once I held onto a fence, unremovable. The second time: my mom had to pick me up after an hour of wailing.

I don't remember any of this so when she told me these details tonight I asked, Separation anxiety? And she said, Hell no! You were already roaming the neighborhood...

Then why, I asked. What the fuck, I said.

She said, I don't know.

WHAT? I said. How can you not know?

(See it? Right there? That's when my modern parenting mode kicked in...*)

She said, Well, one day, we drove by the school and you saw the kids playing and you said you wanted to play with them. So I pulled over right there and told the very sweet teacher (who always loved you by the by) that you wanted to come to school. And she said, bring her in! And I did, and that was that.

That was that? I asked.

And she said, Yup, that was that.

(* She's so smart, my mom. Why do we parents want to explain every bit of atypical kid behavior? Why do we want a reason and diagnosis for almost everything? The upside of our good work? Our children with authentic issues are being identified and helped. The downside? Sometimes our healthy, typical kids never get the chance to be, for a while, just weird, just a kid boycotting school, just a kid.)

Sometimes, that is that, and nothing more.