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.