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Thursday, September 9, 2010

there it is...

all this kindergarten give-away aside, the real issues are beginning to surface. . . annoying but true, that the real issue is not the fact that poor towns do not start on a square footing with rich ones, that language fluency IS an important factor in getting the 'scores' that look good, and that cities with many many tenements probably have a population of students/families which are transient.  get it?  don't forget it when you go to the polls.

not the issue.

1. I am in the public eye, all of a sudden. My own private life of homemom is suddenly on the front page,  (not literally) in that, my anonymity is gone.  The park, the grocery store, the all of it, is suddenly full of faces that I vaguely recognize, names that my son shouts out, bodies that he runs to see-around the corner and out of sight. . .
I am grotesque in my awkwardness and I can't hide in my house, in my neighborhood anymore.
2.  Is it that I don't WANT to be involved in the school? I don't want to save anyone, change anything? is this a guilt of laze? I just want to move, get him safe and coddled in a warm and fuzzy kindergarten with a happy fat teacher who likes to play candyland while singing alphabet songs and then bring in cupcakes once a month?
3. How much of my issue is not being comfortable with the tremendous disparity of intellect in this new social situation? I don't even know whether to say 'class', 'intelligence', 'life expectations'... I don't know. . . its not money, that i do know, although sometimes that allows more flexibility around the hierarchy. . . Its a multigenerational poverty of spirit- what box does that fit in? hope is a strain here... expectations are very low. mygod, with kids? how. how. how.
4.  Is it that I am done being valuable to them, at schoolage?  Is my job, identity, as mother, the one I've just recently finally understood, over?  I'm clearly grammatically losing my mind.  I feel like I've just absorbed, in giving my son to the publicschool gods, the weight and impact of this job on my life.  How am I ever going to absorb the loss of it?  Its going to keep going and going. . .
I think I'm having an empty nest syndrome thing, except that I can't retire, don't want to get drunk by myself (yet) and can't tolerate the ever-rotating mailmen. . . so damn inconsistent...
Do I need to have more babies so that I can have more to do?  By the by, you can do ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING with just one baby at home.  anything.
but the toddler starts a half day preschool next week. 
I am going to completely crack up.
AND i am so damn sad about it all. . . am i done? should i just curl up and die? hire some ditto to make snacks after school and just leave ?

2 comments:

Valerie said...

You are the most valuable person to you children-especially now that they are in school. YOU are the one they will truly learn from. We (teachers) share ideas, but you will always be numero uno.

Jen said...

Issue #1: I too am grotesque in my awkwardness, as you so perfectly put it. Somehow it got easier to run into people over the course of Miss A's kindergarten year.

Issue #2: I think you just realize what you can and can't do. Your helping in the classroom isn't going to turn it into the situation you want for him. Being realistic doesn't mean you're lazy.

Issue #3: I would be very uncomfortable in any situation where my expectations for myself, my family, or my children were significantly higher, lower, or otherwise different than those of the people around us.

Issue #4: Is what I went thru when I gave up on homeschooling and sent Miss A to kindy, and is what I am feeling now with the boys, and I imagine I'll have a breakdown when I send my youngest to kindergarten.

I still want to yank them out and homeschool them, at the same time as I am driven crazy by them and just want some peace and freaking quiet. I don't know where the balance is. Maybe it is impossible for a person like me to find.