Tuesday, September 18, 2007

to the moon seven times plus infinity


school, originally uploaded by ellajohn.

We have had two successful school days. I picked her up every day last week in an attempt to calm her fears about the afternoons on the playground. She arrives home happy but later suggests that she may have to throw up at school tomorrow and would I be able to pick her up if this happens? I'm noncommital, and she moves on to other thoughts.

My mother called with more factual information about my first days at school. I knew she would feel guilty that I thought that I was being kidnapped--thirty six years ago. Apparently I had survived some sort of orientation that involved being wrenched from my mother in a cafeteria and taken to the kindergarden class screaming. Then on the first day of school the kindergarden teacher met us at the elementary school and rode with us to the annex. I must have thought that she was in on the kidnapping conspiracy.

To be honest, I loved kindergarden. I was the smallest and always got to sit on the teacher's lap during story time. I remember playing kitchen and the smell of modelling clay in that room.

I'm pretty sure that Ella will feel the same way. She woke me up very early on saturday morning to whisper Spanish words to me.

Every morning in her classroom we write her a reminder of who will be picking her up in the afternoon and at what time. We draw a clock with the pickup time, and I write her some huge declaration of love. She probably shows her friends thinking that she has more love than they do. At five, everything is compared. She likes it when I make it into a math problem. I love you to the moon seven times plus infinity.

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