Turning A Blind Eye

It’s school registration season and though I’ve been talking about it on the surface and loosely considering options for months, I’m taken aback. WHAT? Time to register for next year, already?

And it’s not even so much that it’s another school year, it’s that Mouse will be going to kindergarten in the fall. She’ll be *5*. How did this happen? It’s really beyond my comprehension. Baboo will be starting preschool as well, mostly because she so wants to be there. She pushes Mouse’s much larger classmates out of the way so *she* can be the first to greet the teacher in the morning. For some reason though, Mouse going to kindy is much more distressing for me. I guess maybe it’s because it really does signal the “end of the baby years”.

The school she currently attends is an AWESOME school. We all love it and frankly, since moving here, it’s been one of the best things that we stumbled upon. It’s been an instant community and has been the perfect introduction to school for our sensitive little Mouse. She fit in so well and has thrived there. We love the other parents, have made some great friends, and love the teachers. I’m so in love with our kindergarten that ‘I’ want to go. I should call it “The Love School”. One of the many things I love about this kindergarten is that there is a very low student/teacher ratio and that, to me, says quality. I also appreciate that it is ½ day every day which I think is appropriate for a 5 year old, schedule wise, and prepares them for going into elementary school without overwhelming them.

However, with Mouse’s current class at max capacity and fewer spots available in the kindergarten, it feels like a bit of a scramble to get her in. I suppose it always feels like that for the “good stuff”. So today, I was filling out paperwork and writing checks so I could turn in the registration forms and secure a spot for both girls.

Because I’m a planner who likes to have a backup plan, even if I get it going almost too late in the game, I decided to check out our local public kindergarten, just in case something happens and we can’t go to our current “love” school. Registration is NOW and I *just* happened to luck out and reserve a spot for the first tour of the registration season. I know, it’s pushing it and I’m well aware of my good fortune, despite me feeling like an ass for not thinking of this SOONER and putting myself in a panic situation where I’m scrambling to get things in order. I HATE that feeling.

So yesterday the girls and I drove over to check it out. It’s a nice building, laid out well and I like their philosophies. I’m not keen on the schedule at all and when they mentioned bussing the kids, I nearly had a heart attack. I was picturing my little Mouse, looking sooo tiny beside all the big kids getting on the big orange death rocket, stepping into the hands of a complete stranger who will drive her around the city without seat belt.
…..
Ok, so maybe I’m over dramatizing things and clearly, I’m in denial about Mouse, and Baboo for that matter, growing up. I know that if Mouse was bussed, she love the riding on the bus; probably more than being at school.

However, I was still mad at myself for not getting on the ball about this sooner. This was important to me, and was in fact, the primary reason we moved out here last year, so why did I leave it all to the last minute before REALLY looking into things?

I’ve been thinking (Hubster DREADS this opening and cringes every time I say it) and I realized that I kind of have blinders on when it comes to picturing the girls’ futures, or rather picturing the girls IN the future. I can look ahead a few steps and plan for that, but longer term with them, I just have a hard time. And I think I’ve figured out why.

The year before Mouse was born, Hubster and I would celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary. When we got married we said we’d renew our vows on our 10th anniversary and then likely start a family. After 9 years, we had felt we’d grown a lot, had been through some interesting times and figured 9 was close enough to 10 and that it was time to activate “the plan”. We decided to have a small ceremony to renew our wedding vows as way of recommitting ourselves to each other as the changed people we had grown into. To celebrate all we’d been through and to start the next phase of our relationship. It involved a trip to our home town so we could be with family and have the ceremony at the church we were married in. We started planning this around March for the coming August.

As I was making the guest list, in my head I was picturing each person as I wrote down their name. Once I had a list, I kept having a niggle of a feeling of forgetting someone. It took me a day or two to realize that I had forgotten my stepdaughter, Hubster’s daughter from a previous relationship. I was so ashamed to have not included her initially, even though I hadn’t sent out invitations or even talked about it much to anyone else other than Hubster. HOW could I forget someone so important!? I *put* her on the list.

As the weeks went by, in my head, I was picturing how things would go, what’d we’d wear, what we would say, planning the food etc, and of course, picturing the people who would be there. The ceremony was going to be pretty small and casual, just our immediate family and friends. AGAIN and again, my head kept leaving her out. I was furious with myself. It wasn’t that I was trying to exclude her or was wanting to be a like a fairy tale “step-mother” wanting to hurry up and have my own kids with Hubster to edge her out. I loved her more than I ever knew I could and in my heart, she was like a daughter to me. I was embarrassed and ashamed and mad, wondering WHY I couldn’t “see” her there? Why did I keep leaving her out? And yet, every time I pictured it, I had to deliberately “put” her in the scene. We wanted her to stand up with us. I WANTED this, wanted her to be a big part of that day. So what was wrong with me, I kept asking myself.

Then, in May, the unspeakable happened. She passed away tragically in an accident. So many hearts were broken, ours included. In shock, we boarded a plane to go home, not really knowing what was going on. It was a long trip and neither Hubster or I spoke much. We were afraid to say too much in fear of breaking down on the plane. As I looked out the window, shutting myself off to be with my thoughts, I started thinking about the vow renewal ceremony. I was so sad to know that she wouldn’t be there; that we wouldn’t get to acknowledge her as our family. And then I remembered how I couldn’t “see” her there over the past months.

I felt a kind of horror at this realization. My stomach clenched and my heart stopped for a minute. All this time, I thought I was a horrible person for wondering if maybe I didn’t want her there (which was so, not true). I never once imagined that she would literally be gone. Why would I ever think that an otherwise wonderful, healthy, vibrant 11 year old girl would die? It was a possibility that never crossed my mind. Coming to the realization that maybe I was supposed to know this; had been “told” this; frightened me. Was I supposed to have figured it out sooner? Was I supposed to have done something? But what?

Like a high speed slide show that happens when we realize something that makes us panic, images and thoughts were flashing before my eyes. I recalled talking with Hubster about our long range plans at some point long past. We would talk about buying a house and having a room for his daughter when she came to visit us and we hoped that she might even live with us some of the time. We truly wanted that, we loved her and wanted for all of us to be together as a family. We felt close to her grandparents with whom she lived and we all got along very well. We always wanted to preserve that peace. And though I never admitted it, whenever I tried to “imagine” her living with us; trying to picture a young teenager’s room within our house, it was always hazy, beyond my reach. It was something more than “I just can’t picture it” because it seemed so foreign. It felt more like a whisper of “this won’t happen” and my heart felt a kind of knowing I didn’t want to admit. Why would I ever admit that? It sounded horrible, evil, like I wanted her gone. So, I dismissed it many times, determining that it seemed so unclear because we still had a long way to go before getting to that point in all of our lives.

How could I have possibly interpreted those… things. Premonitions? When I thought back on all that had happened, all I had “seen”, my heart said “I knew”. And that hurt twice as much. I “knew” and wasn’t prepared. Didn’t want to know. And how could I have prepared for that? There IS no way to prepare for that.

So, when it comes to my girls, whether all of this seem hokey or not, I feel like I have my eyes cast downward a bit. I’m not eyeing the horizon too closely. I don’t try to picture them going to high school, going to college, getting married or having a family. I HOPE with all my heart for them and I WISH them every happiness in the world. I WANT so much for them, but I panic if I ever start to try to daydream about it; to picture it.

I’m trying to live in the here and now as best I can. I’m looking a few steps ahead so we’re not completely run over by the future. They are kids for pete’s sakes so they’re changing every nanosecond of every day. I’m still planning, because that’s what I do, but instead of specifics, it’s a much broader spectrum. It’s a generalized planning.

As the girls grow and change and move through their milestones, sometimes, like with kindergarten, I’m a little blown over because I don’t have it all laid out like I so with so many other things in my life. Most of the time, it’s a happy kind of surprise, while still being surreal. I think “We’re here. We made it here. We’re moving forward. “

But, I’m still too afraid to look too closely at the distant future. I’m afraid of what I might see, or rather, what I might not see. If that’s to be, it’s something I’d rather not know. I’m happy with the here and now and for me, that’s all we really have anyway. I’d rather enjoy this time as we have it rather than worry about what I think we might not have down the road.