First Day of School

Today was my daughter’s first day of kindergarten. She has been talking non-stop about it (and her upcoming birthday, and the wedding we went to Saturday and death. In short, there is not a whole lot of awkward silent moments in my house) for over a week now and her anticipation of it last night took a heavy toll on her sleep. Even though I heard her tossing and turning last night at one in the morning, when I went to wake her up at seven she jumped right out of bed like it was Christmas morning. She ate breakfast in a flash, chattered on incessantly about what she was going to do in school and how many friends she was going to make and how pretty she is going to be in her new school dress (low self esteem has never been a character flaw of hers). As we walked out the front door she was so giddy she was shaking. She could just barely contain her excitement she had towards getting on that long yellow “big girl” school bus. When the bus finally pulled up, she jumped up and down in a hysterical fit of spontaneous glee and squealed in delight. She was still smiling ear-to-ear as she boarded the school bus steps (first one on) and a volunteer placed a yarn necklace on her with a dolphin-shaped charm on it to help them track what bus she goes on. We watched her sit down in a seat halfway down the bus and look out us with an expression on her face that was more appropriate for a bus to Disneyworld rather than to her first experience dealing with a government-run institution, though that thought must have hit her as the bus closed its doors and started slowly pulling away.

The last sight I had of her this morning was of her with both hands pressed upon the glass, face contorted into a grimace of untellable tragedy and a mouth open as if it was on the verge of loosing a blood-curdling scream of horror, as if she had just discovered that kindergarten had been closed due to bad weather and the kids would now be spending the day at Mrs. Mengele’s Morbidly Macabre Tiny Tot Torture Chamber at Auschwitz.