Transitions

For me, by far, my most anxiety filled and stressful moments have been created by any change in the Kid's routine. For example, Kindergarten was, quite simply, a heart attack. My little tiny 5-year-old was all of the sudden spending hours a day with strangers and, to add fuel to the mommy trauma fire, riding the bus. A hall of fame life shortening moment came when I got a frantic call from our full-time babysitter (oh let's just call a spade a spade ... our nanny). "The Kid didn't get off the bus." My heart literally stopped in my chest. I raced out of the front door of my company, to my car, gunned the engine, and drove eighty plus miles per hour to the elementary school, arriving in nine minutes with tears streaming down my face, all the while frantically trying to dial the school to put me in touch with my Kid's teacher.

I grabbed a parking spot, madly galloped into the school and careened into his room. There he was sitting with his teacher. I gasped at her, "why wasn't he on the bus?" She said "I am so sorry, he told us he didn't take the bus today. I don't know why I listened to him. But he was very insistent." I glared at the Kid, I'd deal with him later. Then I glared at her. She didn't have kids. She had no way of knowing she had just shortened my life by a couple of days.

Another horrifying memory was created by soccer camp. One summer the Kid had a week of morning soccer camp. My husband would drop him off and I was supposed to pick him up at noon to take him home to the nanny. The very first day, Monday, I looked down at my watch at work. It was noon, wasn't I supposed to be somewhere? Then it hit me--soccer camp. I high tailed it out the front door, jumped in the car, sped all the way there. Visions of the Kid being taken away by some stranger danced in my head. I dared not call my husband who would have probably seriously considered, for 30 seconds, reporting the incident to social services. I parked the car as quickly as possible and ran a 3 minute mile to the field. There I found my son, sitting on a soccer ball, sobbing in the middle of the chaos of coaches, kids and parents. I was 13 minutes late. Wailing, he said "I thought you weren't ever going to come." Hugging him to my chest I said I was sorry over and over again. To this day, 3 years later, I still randomly get "Remember the time you left me at soccer camp?"

The start of second grade brought another monumental change. I let the nanny go after six and a half years of dedicated service. She took it way worse than the Kid, as she had been with us since he was 6 months old. She was now just part-time, working mornings at a neighbor's and afternoons with us. We really didn't need her that much, and we felt that the Kid was ready for a little Darwin (survival of the fittest). So, at the start of second grade, we put him in an after school program for a couple of hours. He seemed to really like it. They had snack, did homework and played on the field with friends from his class. My husband picked him up at 4. This transition was surprisingly smooth and hassle free.

Then time to make summer arrangements. For the last 3 summers, the Kid has had a combination of his nanny and the local yacht club summer program. Let's just say he was living really large and experiencing a totally different lifestyle then me or my husband have EVER experienced. The club informed us it was time for him to graduate from the kiddy boating program to actually sailing his own sabot. Since, we had no plans to become boaters ourselves it was an easy decision. No more yacht club. The elementary school care was running a summer program, so we thought, great! Between my husband's vacation, my vacation, my mother, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law, the Kid would only have to spend 5 weeks in the school summer program. No big deal.

The first week I felt awful about the whole thing. It seemed like there were only about 25 kids. I wondered where the other after school kids were (typically there are 40-50). It seemed lonely at the school with just this little outpost of humanity. The Kid seemed shy about the whole thing. His regular buddies weren't there. And, although the camp had a daily schedule of all kinds of activities, it appeared that only one from the list was ever really executed.

Everyday with a worried look on my face I asked the Kid "how is school?" And everyday he said "good." On Friday at the end of the first week, I picked him up and he had six inch wide asphalt marks down the front of his t-shirt and skinned and bruised arms and knees. He had apparently fallen hard playing on his Razor. "Who helped you?" "No one. And the big boys yelled good one Kid," he said to me using the typical playground singsong mocking tone.

Later that evening when my husband came home, I wrung my hands repeating the story with tears in my eyes. My husband, by the way, is the youngest of 5 children, the 4 older ones being some of the toughest women I have ever known. I finished my sad story, questioning our childcare option, doubting my life choices, thinking we should move to Riverside and I could start selling on eBay so our poor son wouldn't have to spend the summer in the after school program. I wound down my diatribe and looked mournfully at my husband for his reaction. He turned from me, went back to his computer and tossed over his shoulder "what a whiner."

The Kid is now in week 4 of his 5 weeks, he seems to have friends and graciously tolerates the seven hours of non-stop summer partying. I still check though. Just tonight I asked him how it was going with the big kids. He said "I don't talk to them very much and they don't talk to me very much." Another transitioned survived.