The beginning of the school year saw a lot of changes for
both my kids, but more so for Ava, who would leave the security of the home school
environment for the “big time.” It’s no
secret that I was apprehensive about homeschooling her last year, if for no
other reason than she is sometimes the equivalent of a restaurant’s worst
customer – moody, demanding, impatient, condescending, and impossible to
please. I knew it would be the challenge
of a lifetime and that one week of teaching her would make chasing her around the
house with an insulin-filled syringe look like a stroll in the park. In the end, though, it was a wonderfully
rewarding experience to be instrumental in her reading and learning and it
ultimately gave us the peace of mind we so desperately needed. So, when she graduated from PA Cyber’s
kindergarten, I registered her for first grade in the big house where her older
brother goes and began the process of letting go.
It wasn’t hard, really.
I’ve always known she needed to go; she spent a great deal of time with
me and she needed to be in a learning and social environment with her
peers. She’s clung to me since birth,
and she would let no one hold her save for me, her dad, or her brother. She’d freak when anyone else touched her and
it was so bad that no one could talk to her, let alone look at her. This proved to
be especially challenging at holidays, when the grandparents came bearing
enough gifts to fill a U-Haul. Sure, she’d
take the presents, but don’t you dare watch
her open them.
It was always easier for me to encourage her to venture
forth – maybe because I’d already had the experience of letting go of
Owen. He is, though, a different social
animal. He loves to be around people and
other children. There is nothing shy
about him. I enrolled him in the 3-year-old
program only because all of my friends’ 3-year-olds were entering preschool and
I didn’t want him to be “left behind.”
His father thought he wasn’t ready, but by the time school started 6
months later he was the one telling me that Owen needed it, as I reluctantly
and tearfully drove him to his first day.
When she was two years old, I signed Ava up for Mommy and Me at Owen’s beloved former
preschool – where my hopes of easing her into preschool and socialization were
quickly dashed by her reluctance to do anything without one arm wrapped around my
leg. She lasted only a month in the
3-year-old program the following year; she just couldn’t handle the separation
from me and her blood sugars would skyrocket.
A year later we’d try again and she absolutely loved it, running down
the hall to Mrs. K’s 4-year-old class and her best friend without so much as a
second glance at me. Her blood sugars,
however, were still wild – soaring well into the 200s and suddenly plummeting
to as low as 40.
It was her rollercoaster ride with blood sugars in preschool
that last year that drove my ex-husband to insist on homeschooling her. Um, I mean – me homeschooling her. It was
a hot topic for months, and it seemed everyone had to weigh in, and I did register
her for kindergarten in the elementary school because I was concerned about
what was really best for her overall. In
the end, like always, he won the argument and I enrolled her with PA Cyber a
month before school began. I accepted my
assignment as I always do – as a situation to be faced head on and with as much
grace, strength and caffeine as I could muster.
I believed it was the best thing at the time – I guess I, too, felt
relieved to keep her close to home another year rather than send her away from
our watchful eyes and glucose meter.
Nevertheless, two weeks after our divorce was final we drove
the kids together to their first day of school.
I watched with teary eyes and nervous excitement as my 6-year-old
daughter climbed the stairs of the elementary school with her big brother. We enlisted Owen, a six-year veteran, to make
sure she found her way to her teacher.
It was difficult, that first day. I went home and started on some project I can
no longer recall, in an effort to stay calm until the first blood sugar test
and phone call came from the school nurse.
In the week that followed, I would go into the school 3 times a day, to
assist with testing and bolusing for lunch, snacks and corrections.
Ava did a 360 that week, grabbing onto my hand or arm and
refusing to let go whenever I’d come in.
She’d been so excited to start school, but suddenly – maybe because of
the divorce and tension that continued in the house – she couldn’t walk into
the school unescorted by me, and even then I had to enlist her guidance counselor
to get her down the hall to her class.
She reluctantly let go of me, red-faced and teary eyed, as Ms. B gently
took her hand and softly coaxed her to come see her friends. I stopped going in to assist the nurse after
that, deciding that it was best for Ava not to see me and learn to trust the
nurse to take care of her. And so began
my daily telephone relationship with Mrs. Johnson. The secretaries in the office knew me on
sight, so that every morning we’d walk in and they’d call Ms. B to come for
Ava. And then one day, several weeks
later, Ava walked in with Owen and me, and she walked right by Ms. B without
stopping. Ms. B and I shared a wide-eyed
smile and stared after Miss Ava, who was tripping down the hall with her
oversized backpack without ever looking back.
Ava loves school. I can
now do the PDO (as Owen calls Parent Drop Off), pulling up to the curb – both kids
jump out and run up the steps to school.
Ava tells me all about her classes, about her teacher’s love of Elvis,
about how naughty Zachary is, the bad things Anthony says, and how cute Riley is. And I’ve seen him – he IS cute. And from what I can tell, the feeling is
mutual. Owen calls him her boyfriend;
Ava insists he’s “just a friend” with a sly smile in my direction. Already, at 6, she’s very in tune to the “important”
things in school: her clothes, hair style and social activities. At pick up, while Owen is running for the
car, Ava is lagging behind me, craning her neck toward the busses scoping out
friends to say goodbye to, even hugging girlfriends.
One true blessing – if one can call it a blessing – is that she shares a
classroom with one of two other Type 1 kids in the school. On the days I was still going in to the nurse’s
office, the two of them would be in there together, looking over each other’s
shoulders to see what the blood sugars were.
There’s a certain comfort there, that these two young children share and
understand about each other. She told me
early in the school year that she was annoyed that he was always holding doors
for her, and I had to tell her how nice it was that he has such good manners
and care for her. I remembered how he
walked beside her at the Walk-a-thon in September. Just the other day she asked me, guess who I think is cute? I said, Riley? She said, well,
besides him. I give up. Chase, she said. I’m going to marry him. Good
lord. It starts.
