Third Time Not As Charming

Friday, September 10, 2004

Page 15

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Third Time Not As Charming

By J’AMY PACHECO

I originally had a different column planned and drafted for this week. I was so overwhelmed by recent events, however, that I decided to put it on the back burner and instead take a moment to spill my guts. (So to speak.)

I took my little girl back to school this week. Tuesday was her very first day of third grade. While I loved most of her first- and second-grade years, I confess I’m not very enthusiastic about the move to third.

It may be separation anxiety caused by our having squeezed an incredible amount of fun into our final three days of summer, which happened to fall on a three-day weekend.

Saturday, we went with my brother and his toddler to Disney’s California Adventure theme park. We finished the day watching fireworks at Disneyland, and then riding “Peter Pan” and shopping for souvenirs before heading home close to midnight.

Sunday, we drove out to the desert, where we visited a wonderful children’s museum. There, I pretended to eat the pizza my daughter crafted from felt and bits of sponge, and watched her shop for groceries in a child-sized grocery store. We made animation scenes on paper plates, “dug” for archeological finds, pretended to be performing veterinary services on stuffed dogs and cats and disassembled an old radio with screwdrivers and wire cutters.

That afternoon, my little girl took a plunge in her Grandma’s pool. Before the sun set, she swam—for the first time—the entire length of the pool, twice. By Monday morning, she could do underwater summersaults and had retrieved eight quarters tossed into the deep end of the pool.

Considering she had worn a flotation vest at a pool party the weekend before, I found her actions to be nothing short of incredible.

We returned home Monday afternoon and loaded her new backpack with new school supplies. I laid out her new clothes, washed her long hair with chocolate-scented shampoo and rolled it with cloth strips, and packed her new Tinker Bell lunchbox with a week’s worth of food.

She was not enthusiastic about returning to school, and made sure I knew that when I awakened her Tuesday morning. But when we arrived and she saw schoolmates she hadn’t seen for three months, she appeared to warm up to the idea.

Her elementary school functions like middle school, with students changing classes up to five times each day. First- and second-graders are “clustered,” sharing homerooms and some classes. Entering the three-four cluster, my daughter was faced with a new homeroom, and all new teachers.

When I walked her to her door, she took my hand and admitted she was scared. I took her into her homeroom, and was delighted to notice a boy with whom she’d shared a table in kindergarten. I persuaded him to sit by her, hugged her good-bye, and hurried out the door wondering which of us was going to cry first.

It could have been the summer fun that made it hard to leave—or it could have been the memory of the Russian school hostage crisis of last week. As I said when she started kindergarten two days after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, it’s difficult to send your child out into the world days after learning how awful that world can be.

Or it may have been the observation that’s she’s halfway between being little and big. For the first time, she wheeled a “big girl” backpack—plain pink, with no cartoon character on it. But inside the backpack were a Tinker Bell notebook and two Disney Princess folders.

Or it may simply have been the feeling that things are moving too quickly. While I struggled with leaving my only child behind, my best friend deposited not only her own third-grader, but her middle child, who started kindergarten the same day.

No child was ever more ready than my friend’s kindergartner, who can already write her numbers up to 100. But when I looked at her, all I could see was the baby she was when I met her, using a chair for support while she tried to learn to walk.

My friend—who happens to be as emotional as me—described spending Monday night watching her girls sleep and touching their school clothes. Oh yeah, and crying.

I’m sure it’s going to be a great year. My third-grader is smart, prepared and totally ready to make the jump from being a little girl to being a middle-grader.

Unfortunately, her Mom isn’t.