Given that I write these columns two weeks before they hit print, by the time you read this, the angst will have passed.
And if it hasn't passed, we're in more trouble than I'd imagined. Send cookies.
The Diva, bless her, is not good with transitions. Change is to be resisted in Divaland. As an example, I toss out the fact that she didn't get her first tooth until she was a year old. I suspect it's because she didn't want to have to change from a baby who gummed her food to one who could chew it.
In her defense, she did start talking early _ but I suspect that was only so that she could voice how much she hated every last break in her routine. Which she does. In great detail.
Right now, we're in the middle of a huge shift. It's one that 5-year-olds everywhere have faced over these past weeks. Kindergarten is just a few short days away.
The Diva's been gently booted out of preschool and has been stuck at home with boring old me for 10 days until the Wednesday after Labor Day. Which would be easier if I hadn't already gone back to school myself. The patchwork child-care juggling routine is making us all a little wacky, truth be told, but that's a minor source of stress.
No, the biggest problem is that the Diva is lousy at transitions.
Intellectually, she's ready for new challenges. She has the maturity and independence. In conversation, she'll tell you how excited she is to start something new. Starting something new, in this case, means letting go of the old. Therein lies the problem.
For the bulk of her life, the Diva has gone to day care/preschool _ or, as she calls it, "caprischool." For the last couple of years, that caprischool was the Bugbee Children's Center. You can argue all you want about how moms should stay home or that moms should work or that day care is evil or is the best thing since brownies. For us, Bugbee has been a sanity saver.
What I didn't realize is that it had also grown into a warm and fuzzy place for my kid. At the goodbye ceremony a couple of days ago, the Diva attached herself to my legs like a barnacle. During the first singing portion of the event, tears were streaming down her face.
Shortly after we wandered out into the hall, she wailed about not wanting to say goodbye to her friends and her class and her teachers.
Her little weepy voice kept telling me that she just wanted to go home, so that she wouldn't have to deal with this ending. The whole time we were out there, she sobbed like someone had stolen her puppy.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not overly sentimental. My husband and I aren't always the best about remembering to celebrate things like anniversaries. I don't have that many mementos from various stages of my life, like a lock of hair from the kids' first haircuts or a book of matches from my first date or the receipt from my first parking ticket. But when the Diva burst into tears, I wasn't far behind.
Genetics is a weird business. The biological origins of what makes the Diva the Diva and the Dude the Dude are a mystery most of the time. Some of it's learned, of course. Some of their behaviors came factory installed.
While I can't explain most of what they do, I know why Diva has such a hard time with transitions. I distinctly remember spending the day of my high school graduation sobbing, even though my time spent there was less than wonderful. My first days of college were blurry with tears. My dad had a hard time driving away, he told me later, since I seemed to be so torn up.
In truth, I wasn't sad about any of it. I was glad to be done and glad to be starting something new. What brought out the tears was the change from one phase of life to the next. After my first 10 days of college, I didn't want to leave. I figure the same will be true of the Diva.
For now, though, we're in limbo. One chapter is closed, which is hard for both of us. She misses Bugbee and her teachers and, especially, the playgrounds. I do, too, but also know that this is one more step she'll take away from home. Her preschool days are gone and are already taking on the sweet sepia tones of nostalgia.
The next chapter _ the one where she goes to the big school _ hasn't started yet. Three-quarters of me can't wait until it does so that I can do crazy stuff like go to the bathroom without an audience.
But for now, we're characters in search of the next part of story and rattle around in overwrought emotional states while we wait. She's extra touchy since nothing feels familiar. I'm extra weepy because the anticipation of any event is always more fraught than the event itself. It's big fun here right now.
My only consolation is that it'll be different with the Dude. Our biggest challenge is keeping him from running head-first into new things. He must get that from his dad.
Adrienne Martini is freelance writer, instructor at the State University College at Oneonta and Hartwick College, mom to Maddy and Cory and wife to Scott and author of "Hillbilly Gothic," published by the Free Press.
Print this story
E-mail this story
