Dress rehearsal

Last night was chock-full of nightmares, and ones so vivid and plausible that they weren’t even fun. Getting yelled at by two different editors at work because everyone believes their copy is the most important and time-sensitive copy that ever copied. My water breaking while standing in line at Chik-fil-A (to be honest, the scariest part of this one was the alarming realization Oh no, I didn’t get my waffle fries!). Walking through the empty halls of Former Place of Work and finding bodies piled in every corner—ok, perhaps not so plausible from a literal standpoint, but boy do I get what my subconscious meant.

Between dreams, I got up to go to the bathroom four times, tripped on a dog three out of the four times, chugged a half-gallon of water around 2 a.m., rearranged Alex in bed (he’s taken to sleeping sideways across the bed with his head and legs hanging off opposite ends), popped some Tylenol for my back, and pondered the mysteries of the universe. All in all, a night of productivity. Does that mean I can sit and stare catatonically at the wall today? That’s the plan.

Kindergarten orientation went off without a hitch. I fully expected hitches. Especially when they ushered us inside the school and without warning funneled parents down one hallway, kids down another (“Let them go, Mamas; you’ll have to do it soon enough,” announced the principal—encouragingly??) and Alex turned around and fixed me with Those Eyes and gave me a trembly smile that was so utterly and obviously aiming for brave that a little piece of my heart broke off and shattered right there on the floor outside the cafeteria. Dramatic? Yes. True? Trust me.

It struck me during the parents’ portion of the meeting how very fish-out-of-water I feel in this little microcosm of society, and that’s a little bit surprising considering I’ve lived in it for the better part of my life. The other parents are very nice, and I chatted with a few of them and even saw a few familiar faces, but wow—I’d say there’s a mere three degrees of separation working in this community.

Oh, and my what-the-hell moment came when one of the cheerleaders from my own middle- and high-school days came out to ... do a cheer. For a second I could not have told you what year it was.

The kids who were herded into the lunchroom by the kindergarten teachers to reunite with us did not look older and wiser than the ones we’d watched wander confusedly down the hall an hour before. Their little faces registered some relief, some bewilderment, some pride ... but most notably they just looked very, very small.

Mine could not wait to tell me how he’d shared the crayons with a boy without even being asked and that he’d been a little bit scared at first but that he didn’t cry and then he’d made a friend and he’d talked to a grownup and used his manners and made a monkey and danced to a funny song that he didn’t remember and and and ... !!!

An almost-5-year-old’s excitement is infectious, I tell you.

I took him to Publix and told him he could pick out whatever he wanted as a treat for doing so great. He picked orange-flavored Tic-Tacs.