The Night Before:
2) Insomnia comes like an asshat in the night.
3) You will worry not so much about the next very big day, because as the disease of sleeplessness goes, you will worry about days you had five thousand days ago.
4) You will decide at some point -- 2:14am? 3:20am? -- that you totally suck.
The Morning Of:
1) You will not so much wake as come conscious.
2) You will braid deliciously, somehow perfectly French.
3) The GFYO will bury in his blanket and fight for and get ten more minutes.
4) This will break you: my baby.
5) There are some things about some kids that never change: she hates the way her shoes feel, she hates how her pants feel, she hates you this morning and you expected it.
6) Last night, when you weren't sleeping, you knew this would happen.
The Minute Of:
1) She poses. She grimaces. He cracks jokes with his face.
2) You take the pictures, just clicking, like always.
3) They will leave you today, armed with your armor and garbage and manners.
4) She hangs on as long as she can before her sweet walk alone.
5) She hangs on until you explain the cast, then she hovers over everyone. So big, that kid.
6) The GFYO.
7) The GFYO? He goes to school for the first time and you beg him to hug you and he does and the room is sweaty with all the other parents and all the regret and hope and fear and you bolt.
9) I bolt.
Morning alone:
1) You manage a meeting with many well-meaning parents amongst you.
2) You get busy and make more meetings and you sit and type and type.
3) None of it is poetry or your fiction.
Afternoon:
1) Quiet is such a relative word....after they come home.
2) Loud is louder.
3) The GFYO is untouchable and grumpy and exhausted and every part of your body wishes to swallow him whole, to slurp up his final tiny boy.
4) He gives you five seconds of love and then, he is a pile of whine and lousy.
5) The oldest girl says her teacher is "awkward"
6) The other girl can't remember the name of one classmate.
7) Success?
Later:
1) The GFYO at bedtime says "wait! what! It's another school night?"
2) The Girls easily batten down to the great promise of their tomorrow.
3) The Kid makes fantasy picks in Boston.
4) You write it down and you breathe out -- mostly smoke still. You're such a loser.
5) You are left with a mountain of paperwork and no poems in the pile.
6) You are left all by yourself at last.
7) You wished for this once, when you were buried in children and diapers and terrible songs: you wished for this very day to come -- unburdened for a while, a respite, School.
Now:
1) You should write more than ever.
2) Besides them and him, stringing words together is your favorite.
3) It's a fine line between you and me.
8commentsBrilliant Person Wrote...
haha I love that "Wait. Its another school night". Poor GFYO getting thrown into real life totally sucks no matter how old you are!
The not-so GFYO at our house was very excited about pre-K until it was a reality. Now all I hear at bedtime is "Tomorrow a stay-home day?" Oh how I have come to hate answering in the negative, because of the hysteria that ensues. And the mornings, with the fighting, and the delay tactics, and the breakfast refusal (followed by the "I'm hungry" whine as you're trying to get them all out the door!) and the packing of the nutritious lunches (who am I kidding, we're 4 weeks into the school year and I've already let them have Lunchables three times...)
Oops, sorry for the rant in response to your eloquent prose. We had a rough morning here in Exile; please excuse me.
We're two days in now...and if we're not all sick by the end of the week I'll be very VERY surprised.
It does get easier. And now you can go out to lunch and have drinks. It's the poet thing to do.
I've lived the student version and the teacher version, but never the parent version of the first day of school. Especially the last one off to school edition. Don't be so hard on yourself, Miss Picket - one does what one needs to do to get through stressful times. The days will fall into a routine and you'll get your poetry and fiction written in the solitude of the afternoon before the little drunk people return home.
Poor GFYO. It's all school nights, except for the summer nights for about the next 17 years.
Oy. It sounds bad when you put it that way, doesn't it?
Those quiet afternoons...they race by. I don't get that, especially when I've spent the sleepless night prior plotting them out to the last detail.
Also, even now with second grade kicking in, I still fight the urge to burst into tears when my baby burrows under the blankets each school morning. Second grade? Already? This feels impossible!
Im still nightmaring over the missed first day of school picture I always take because I slept so little I slept right through, around and past it. Can you fake a first day of school picture a month later?
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