“Remember the doctor who was brown who died?” Sailor asks me at bedtime, completely out of the blue, referring to the season premier of ER back in September. “When you cried. And after I cried. The kind of cry you do when you are angry.”
“Yes, I remember,” I say and pull him close for a snuggle.
This morning Sailor and I register him for kindergarten. He is happy to be going. Excited, even. I am melancholy but I put on a brave face for him.
“What are you going to do when he’s in school?” the friendly security guard asks me. “I need to have another baby,” I say, not terribly flirtatiously.
Outside Sailor tells me that a baby would not be that fun. “You can’t bake cookies with a baby, or go shopping places.” He is so right. I am going to miss the hell out of him when he goes to kindergarten in the fall.
Sailor somehow manages, thru a bit of bribery, to convince me to take him to Chuck E. Cheese for a bit this afternoon. He has 5 tokens from some previous trip. I allow another dollar’s worth. He plays for nearly 45 minutes. His last game is a rollercoaster that takes 2 tokens and is for 2 players. I suggest he wait til Mac is here with him next time. Be he is adamant that this is how he wants to spend his last 2 tokens. We sit side-by-side, sometimes holding hands. I make funny, frightened noises while we “ride” and he explodes in peals of laughter and I know without a doubt that he has made the best use of his tokens and I have made the best use of my time.
Lately I have been seeing my age in the lines in my face and I have been battling hard to reverse or at the very least stop the process and return to the face of my youth. The more I obsess the more my boys come to me to tell me how young I look. Tonight I was 19 in their eyes. Haggard the other morning before my shower, I asked Mac if I still looked pretty to him. “Of course!” he tells me. “You are beautiful. It doesn’t matter your hair or your face. It’s you!” He knows how to make it all worth while.
Today after school he gets in the car and bursts into tears. “I didn’t get a Good Citizen award,” he sobs. Apparently it is report card day. I am able to explain to him why he did not get a perfect attendance award, having been absent 7 out of 29 days this quarter (hey, it was cold out in February, he had the flu and a stomach bug, and there was a crappy field trip!) ad tardy twice (only twice?!). And while I could also explain why he did not get the “No more than 2 B’s and no C’s or D’s” award (you have 4 B’s but all the rest are A’s) I would be hard pressed to explain how the teacher feels justified in giving a child who reads a 250-page book in 2 days a B in reading. Conference requested? You betcha!
I know it’s been awhile but have I mentioned how much I HATE SCHOOL!?!?!? I know, I know, I need to quit bitching and just learn to deal with it. But I can’t. I just can’t. Sigh.
Only one more day til spring break! We have ten whole days including weekends and we are going to have a blast doing all sorts of coupon-ed, discounted things! And. We are going to do Mac’s mandatory science fair project. Which is due 3 days after break is over. And which will be voted on in class and MAY NOT EVEN MAKE IT TO THE G-D DAMN MANDATORY SCIENCE FAIR!
And after spring break, only 9 more weeks of school. Which sounds like very little. Except when you compare it to the number of weeks of summer break. Which this year happens to be 12. May I stab myself in the head now?
Talking to Sailor about recitals. Everyone plays the violin one at a time, I explain. “Whose violin?” he asks.
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