Family Friday, A Scratch, and a Very Big Decision
It is family Friday again today and I leave Z with my mom, who is visiting, and go plant seeds in Dixie cups with C’s kindergarten class. C is on the approximation of perfect behavior and more or less correctly spells “red pepper” on the seed box and then goes to the reading rug with a friend and his dad so I help clean up around the classroom and then check in with his teacher about why C is still so confused about where to put his homework on Fridays. She has that meaning-to-talk to you look on her face, and leans in to tell me that C has been out of control in the classroom of late, characteristic for him at home, maybe, but not so much at school. He’s not listening. He’s lost that maturity he had when he started school. He’s following the other out-of-control boys in the classroom. Case in point is when the assistant principal came in to do an evaluation, he was the one bonkers kid in the class. Immediately I’m blaming Governor Cuomo, or maybe it’s the legislature, or our previous governor, or maybe Mike Bloomberg, because I am pretty sure they have tied a teacher’s compensation to a superior’s classroom evaluation, and I know C just sunk it… I know she’s compassionate and she’s not telling me C’s going to juvie, but I’m pretty much sure this is All My Fault, mostly because I’m a bad mom, and also because I yell at him too much and now he’s internalized all the anxiety I’m giving him.
Back at home Z builds houses out of Magnatiles but then doesn’t nap. He spends at least an hour pulling up stools to take forbidden items down from the kitchen counter top – things that were placed there because they were out of his reach: a Ziploc bag of screws, an expired Epi-pen, Valentine’s cards with lollipops; he pulls my hair when I take them away.
After C comes home from school we decide to make a calendar to count down to his birthday. While I’m getting some supplies there is a tremendous amount of shrieking, rather like a cat getting a bird, and I come out to the kitchen to find deep scratches on C’s face. I don’t get a straight story but it seems to have something to do with Z taking C’s dreidel and C taking it back. (Yes, I still have dreidels around the house. I know Hanukah was in December). We make C’s calendar but then C has a minor meltdown after he writes the countdown to his birthday in marker; it hasn’t occurred to him that number will change with each day. Z occupies himself by dribbling out glue on green paper. Seems good enough to me.
Meanwhile I’m preoccupied with what to do about The Book – the thing that was supposed to be my next stage in life but is slowly fading into evanescence. We have gotten a low offer for it; do we take the crappy offer and get it published, or follow the advice of our agent, who says to self-publish? I have become so overwhelmed by this decision – we must make it next week – that I cannot think clearly about any aspect of my life, and, every decision seems overwhelmed by the Big Decision and the Big Decision is really a choice between the lesser of two bad choices.
At dinner C suggests we read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day at story time. And we do.