Month: September 2011

As a parent, I found it was surprisingly hard to concentrate on anything in the hours that followed leaving my daughter at a new and larger school.  (It doesn’t help that the media, especially WNYC is constantly referring to 9/11 when I was newly transplanted to New York with a walking baby in diapers).  I remember the first days of preschool, Pre-K, kindergarten and all of the other grades throughout her elementary school career when, on the first day, the parents were allowed to escort their children to their classroom and meet their new teachers.  No more.

The first day of middle school isn’t anything like the first day of elementary school.  It wasn’t like kindergarten. We didn’t go into the classroom. We did go into the building but only a few feet until my child identified the correct person with a clipboard who told her what group she was in and where to go. And then we were done. The husband and I were so disoriented we got on the F train going further into Brooklyn instead of into Manhattan. Oh well. A cup of coffee together–which we had time for because middle school starts almost an hour earlier than elementary school did.   Thank goodness for the short commute.  Theatre people and musicians are notoriously bad at getting their offspring to school on time.  In New York City it is the attendance and lateness records that affect the outcome of the school application process for the next school on the great education conveyor belt.  (Well it was a conveyor belt for me in mid-America.  It’s a crap-shoot in NYC.)

In Manhattan, before I got down to work, I walked from The Husband’s office building through Times Square. I walked through the Disney Store and Toys R because I was missing my girl. The Disney store was full of costumes she is too old to wear. At Toys R Us I remembered when she was so small I kept a running list in my head of developmental toys: blocks, dishes, puzzles, dress up clothes and wether or not she had them yet and when I would give them to her. There wasn’t anything for me to buy for her today.  Her objects of desire come from other establishments now. Sigh.

 

I was thoroughly entertained watching my 14-month old walk because someone had she walked like a drunk and I agreed to the point of laughing out loud.

On Thursday, September 6, 2001:  I was impressed that my little girl ate 2 plums along with yogurt and some of my cheese for her breakfast.  I took her to the to the mom and baby support group we had been attending at the Elisabeth Seaton childbirth center on 14th street where I realized that she was the oldest one there that day and that we would have to switch to the Tuesday toddler group.  Afterwards I pushed the stroller to the Bleeker Street Playground, had a slice of pizza for lunch and then took the subway from West 4th to Chambers to see Rennie Harris and the Urban Bush Women performing in the World Trade Center Plaza.  My Kid fell asleep on the train.  The Husband met us there after work and we went home together.  We had just discovered this was a a great place for us to meet at the end of the day, on our A-train subway line, halfway between our Brooklyn apartment in Fort Greene and The Husband’s Manhattan office in Chelsea.

I had an application for the Montessori School at the Brooklyn YWCA in front of me, doing the math with various combinations of hours and days trying to figure out how much childcare we could afford.  I was getting ready to look for a job. We were still so new to Brooklyn. September was going to be the first month that my husband, daughter and I were all going to be together for a whole month in our own place in our new city since the job transfer from Seattle.

I was looking forward to meeting other moms from the neighborhood who had walking babies the same age as my daughter at the first session of the toddler playgroup at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church at 11:30 on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

Happy Birthday to my BEAUTIFUL SISTER.
She suffered from the Labor Day Weekend everyone-is-out-of-town-bad-time-for-a-birthday-party her whole life.
But she grew up and became an amazing person all the same.
I LOVE YOU!!!!

My goal is to post every day this month.

We dropped  off our daughter at her new middle school at 7:30 this morning.  It’s not the first day of school.  It’s 6th grade orientation.  They’re going to take a bus upstate for the day to play some games and get to know each other before school starts next week.  It’s like an off-site retreat.

My kid said good-bye and went into the cafeteria with the other girls.  We waited out in the lobby with the other parents.  Then a mom that we knew came in with her daughter who went into the cafeteria.  The mother followed her daughter.  I followed the other mom.

There were lots of other parents standing around the edges of the cafeteria where the girls sat together at the tables waiting to be told what to do next.

My kid saw me and immediately stopped talking to the girl next to her.

She glared at me.

Her eyes flashed: “Get out of here!”

Well…

That’s middle school so far.