Tomorrow is my son's first day of Kindergarten. I can remember how it felt to hold him in my arms in the hospital, looking at his tiny, perfect face, but suddenly we are here.
Kindergarten.
Like a good little Type-A parent, I have exhaustively studied bus schedules and lunch menus, planned afterschool activities, and plotted every moment of Wednesday like an intricate dance, who will pick up, drop off, meet here, collect there. I've practically earned college credits in "Kindergarten Prep", so adamant am I that nothing will go wrong for my little man on his first day of school. In order to be on time for the big yellow school bus, I will lay out everything the night before: clothes, lunches, backpack. I will be prepared, because he is my baby, and I am his Mommy, and he is going to Kindergarten.
Planning out his lunch was easy. Yogurt, granola bar, scooby snacks, lots of little things to choose from, so he wouldn't go hungry in the big cafeteria, or need to figure out how to order a hot lunch on the first day. Lots of things that are his favorites, so he will feel comforted and loved in his new school, with the new kids, and the new teacher. And of course, a juice box, because that is what the big kids drink at Kindergarten.
Except there are no juice boxes in the fridge. I am standing in the door of the refrigerator, moving boxes and cartons and tupperware, faster and faster because there has got to be a juice box. How can we not have any juice boxes? For the love of God, where are all the juice boxes?! I finally unearth a lone box, slightly crushed and with no straw. It's the only thing I can find.
And I start to cry.
I am his Mommy, and it's my job to make him ready for this day, to give him everything he needs when he walks through that door, and I can't even give him a juice box. How will he know where to get a drink, we haven't set up his account yet for him to buy milk, he's got a bit of a cough, what if he gets a tickle in his throat? How could I have spent all that time reading and planning and preparing, and not even remembered a simple juice box? It feels like the worst thing in the world right now. I am the worst parent in the world right now. I don't even have a juice box to give my baby on his first day of Kindergarten.
My husband, ever the fixer, immediately starts making suggestions. We can find another straw. We can go to the store in the morning and get new juice boxes before the bus drops him off. We can send him with a bottle of water. In the end, I decide I will do them all, because it's the only thing I can do. I won't be able to stay in the classroom, or make the kids play with him, or make him like his teacher and feel happy, and make him learn what he'll need to, and tie his shoes and help him use the potty, and kiss him if he falls down and hurts himself, and give him a hug for good measure.
Instead, come hell or high water, I will get him a juice box.
Coming soon, from Pixar…
8 years ago
