Week 8

It’s Tuesday evening.

So far the highlights of this week (a.k.a. why I still hate first grade)…. Mac tells me this morning that he saw a monkey thermos in the lost-and-found yesterday. It had the first three numbers of our phone number on it. And our street name. So he reports. Why didn’t he bring it home? It didn’t have his name on it; it wasn’t his. Where is our other monkey thermos? No one seems to know. Sailor and I run into school to see for ourselves. But lost-and-found is empty. The contents have been donated. To? The security guy is uncertain. Another expensive, non-chemical-leaching thermos gone.

I make Mac's lunch and put it in the lunch box that has been labeled “babyish” by Mac’s “best friend.” His face grows dim. He doesn’t want the lunch box. He is afraid of the scorn. I have already talked to the boy’s mom about this. I want to take my baby out of this school and away from these mean boys. But it is probably this attitude of mine that gets him picked on. By his friends. His “best” friends. After school Mac is half starved to death. The reason? He could not get his food thermos open. He blames me for tightening it too much again. But I didn’t, I explain. I actually left it rather loose this morning because he had some trouble yesterday. “By the time I got Matt W. to open it lunch was over,” he tells me, while wolfing down quesadillas and rice with alarming speed. I ask questions to cover my tears of dismay. Is there no one to help you? What if you raised your hand? Of course he couldn’t have climbed from his sardine-can-tight seat to get to a teacher. He didn’t drink his milk, so preoccupied with his effort. What about the cookie in the ziplock baggie? I ask. I am surprised that he has even passed that up. “I know I am not supposed to eat the cookie til I eat my other food.” My heart breaks. But I also know I have raised a child not unlike myself and I am proud of him for understanding the rules, tho wishing slightly he could understand when it’s ok to bend them. He is me.

Mac is playing in the playground after school today. “Shoot! I forgot my pink t-shirt at school!” He goes on to explain that one of his so-called best friends (I am REALLY starting to dislike these little brats – I mean, boys) was making fun of the shirt because it was pink. So he took it off and put it in his desk. I remind Mac that his friend didn’t know about the kindergarten pink shirt day last year because he is new to the school. I want to call the boy’s mother. Have I mentioned that I am REALLY starting to dislike these little boys? Have I mentioned that I am really really really really getting sick of this 1st grade crap? When we get home Sailor shows Mac the Halloween spider webbing we have stretched across the front yard gate. This seems to be the most popular Halloween décor this year. It’s everywhere. Ours looks good. But Sailor notices some yellow on the corner. “What is that lellow?” I inspect. “Dog pee!” How RUDE!!!

This morning we get up at 6:30 instead of the usual 6:45-snooze-til-7:10. It is still dark out. The boys think it is still the middle of the night! Wednesday morning seems like so many hours ago. It’s 10:50pm and I am still up (obviously). And hungry. As usual.

We wake up at 6:30 and get right out of bed. We have time to sit on my bedroom floor and play a game of Uno, which Sailor has never played before. It is really really nice. After we play I shower and then the boys ask for another breakfast. Guess what? We are late for school again! Mac does make it into the front door before it is locked. Sailor and I follow to track down the monkey thermos. The engineer lady has a huge garbage bag of lost-and-found items to be donated. We stand in the parking lot while I sort thru the bag. I am appalled by all the lunch boxes, many with children’s names written right on them, and all the clothes. One lunch box, when opened, reveals so much black mould I cannot even identify the contents. Many boxes have lunch still in them. This is appalling (did I mention that already!?). The monkey thermos is not there but I return an old book to a kindergartener and take three lunchboxes home with me. It’s not stealing.

Sailor is in French class and I am in the adjacent nail salon getting my nails redone from yesterday’s salon excursion with my mom. If I pay for a manicure I want it to look better than when I do it myself. And right now it does not. My phone rings but I do not answer. When I check the message 20 minutes later I hear the nicer of the two school secretaries telling me that Mac is not feeling well. I fly out of the salon and run to my car. I have Mac a few minutes later. He wants to go home and lie in his bed and have a cold glass of water. But we have to get Sailor and bring him to soccer. Where we stay with the other boy named Mac, who is also sick, and who hovers way too close for my comfort. My Mac does not seem to be sick as he finishes his lunch completely, or when he monkeys around, or when he asks to go to art class with Sailor. I think he just needed some time home with us. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t care. He is with us today, where he belongs.

I work on the school newsletter. I realize that it is taking a lot of my energy to be disgruntled all the time. Thing is, they always say that if you don’t like something, fix it. But the roads toward solution are not paved to be passable and so I am stuck. I think everyone from the room mothers to the principal at the school hate me. I am their worst nightmare. I look into Montessori school for my boys for next year. While I did attend a Montessori preschool in the early 1970s, which would likely help me get my boys in, I lack the $15,000 for the year’s tuition.

The boys are exhausted and want to take a nap at 4:00 so I suggest they put on their pajamas. They play. We eat a multi-course meal because nothing is ready when it is meant to be. Their dad comes to see them. They play a little, read some stories and he leaves early enough for them to be in bed reasonably. But they mess around and Sailor is going insane in my bed. I have to swat his little bottom – as in “snap out of it!” – and then he curls up at my side and falls asleep straight away. And now my babies are asleep here with me. Where I love them to be.

6:30am is fast approaching and I really want to be on time to school tomorrow morning.

We are on time to school on Thursday morning. In fact we are early. Because we drive. I have decided to make a trek to the nearby ‘burbs for a couple of cases of taffy apples. When I park outside school to take Mac to his line I am dreadfully embarrassed by the condition of our car, which is going to be 11 years old next month. Funny, when I bought this car I had absolutely NO intention of driving it up through my 40th birthday. But that is what is going to happen if I don’t get a new car before January 31st. Which, unless Oprah steps in, is absolutely not going to happen. Sailor and I drive the looooong way to get to the taffy apple factory because there is construction on the expressway. But so many people are avoiding the expressway there was absolutely no traffic. So I wasted 45 minutes driving to a destination a mere 15 minutes away. Which sets me into a panic, feeling so far away from Mac. Until I realize I could be home in 15 minutes if I need to be. In the car Sailor hears a Halloween costume commercial for the Party City store. “What should I be for Halloween?” I ask him. “I don’t know what to be yet.” “You should go to Party City,” he suggests. Wise boy. Good listener. A few minutes later he is singing a song from school. “Remember this song about the Polar constrictor?” I don’t remember the song. Then, “What’s a Polar Constrictor?” Sailor spends the day telling me he does not want to go to school, but when it is time to drop him off he is fine. I have told him that I will be picking him up early from school today. “When it’s not over yet?” After school we go to a birthday party for one of Mac’s classmates. It’s at one of those new inflatables places. We jump, slide, climb, sweat, laugh ourselves to the point of exhaustion and starvation. We have a blast! And when we get home it’s 6:45pm. We have 15 minutes to get to bed. Like that is likely to happen. Mac has a page of math homework, a couple pages of writing work he didn’t complete when he was absent the other day, two books to read, the animal report due on Monday, a Halloween costume to make before Mac leaves for school tomorrow … and Mac definitely needs a bath. I am way too tired to do anything and when he calls me a “meany” for not letting him eat popcorn before his homework is done (per my mother, who has stopped up to make said popcorn with her popcorn blower that has been living on my kitchen table for a week) I put his homework away and send him to bed. What a perfectly BAD ending to a perfectly good day. Urgh! I hate when I do that. But you know, good children like Mac understand when they have crossed the line and the lesson was learned. Minutes later he has come out to hug and kiss me and tell me how much he loves me. They say children need discipline, which I firmly believe. And while I think I may be a little too hard on Mac sometimes I also think I have helped make him a conscientious, caring, kind young boy. He knows that I won’t tolerate the bad behaviour. Now if only I could get his little brother to understand. His little brother, by the way, has been really well-behaved these past few days. I have no idea why, but I am thoroughly enjoying him!

Tomorrow is Mac’s Halloween party after school. We are talking about one of the girls in his class who is not American. “She is a nun girl,” Mac informs me, leading me to believe she must wear a veil. “Her mom is a nun,” he continues. I know for a fact that her mother is pregnant and most certainly not a nun but I find this so funny I can’t bear to correct him.