Saturday, July 02, 2011
lolly pop
June 30:
Today was the landmark, the endpoint, the date after which it all will be different. At a time when I’m thinking about time all the time, this in particular was a momentous day. Today, like always, we piled into the car together at a quarter to eight, bags packed for the day, and K drove us nine short blocks and two long ones to Babies of Muffinville, the day-care center we’ve been visiting three times a week for five years, on and off. Mostly on. When Z was ready to start broadening his horizons, we started wading through acres of promotional material to find a suitable place for him to get his head on straight. Just as we were getting datafreeze from all the information pouring in, a neighbor who spoke as if she knew what she was talking about schooled us - “Just call Oyun, she’ll take care of everything.” And she did. Z went there thrice weekly till he started at the big kids’ preschool out at the Fort where he arrived with a true leg up, knowing all his letters and numbers and colors and prepositions, seriously ready to start the serious business of learning. Oyun’s day-care had been so much more than a babysitting and meal service. He’d been taken care of, in every good sense of the word.
It wasn’t long after Z started at preschool that J began to make his own Tues-through-Thurs forays to Muffinville. He, too, got the same loving attention, regular structure, firm discipline, delicious food and warm support that Z had received. Oyun always knew what was going on, what the kids needed or needed to avoid, the right toy to distract them, the right enticement to get them to sit at the table and play subtly educational games. And like Z, J blossomed under her kind tutelage. For both boys, Muffinville was like a second home, and for K and me, Oyun was the stand-in that we, who had no sitter and no close family to impose upon, so badly sometimes needed.
J is now three - nearly three and a half, god save us - and ready to move on from day-care. Of equal relevance, the preschool has now cleared out enough students for the summer that it’s ready for J to matriculate. So that’s just what he’s going to do. After the upcoming long holiday weekend, J will no longer head out to Muffinville three mornings a week. He’ll go to the preschool Z once attended and where he still goes for summer session and after-care. Till first grade starts we’ll have a single drop-off, and even after Z’s elementary school year begins, we will finally have a single pick-up for the foreseeable future. We’re all going to miss Muffinville, but we’re excited for the next phase. There’s just one little hitch, and it seems to be in my heart.
As I’ve repeatedly mentioned, we’ve had the munchkin on a three-day day-care schedule. Fridays and Monday afternoons, K took off work and wrangled the home-puppies - both of them on Fridays when Z was off school, just J on Monday afternoons. That left J’s Monday mornings to be covered, and me to cover them. I negotiated an alternate work schedule that kept me at the office an extra 45 minutes daily, but gave me Monday mornings for one-on-one time - first with Z, then, later, with J. For what has truly been the better part of five years, my weeks have begun with a sublimely paternal engagement.
During the second, J-based phase of this era, we’ve had a reliable little schedule for our mutual Monday mornings. K and Z would head out by 8 am, after which J and I would spend an hour or two reading, playing, exploring around the house, or gazing out the front windows at arriving workmen or the garbage trucks and street sweepers plying our road. With leisure and in high spirits we’d dress ourselves, start a little laundry going, clean up the kitchen, stow the most egregiously discommodious toys. It was a lesson for J in domesticity, for me in patience, and for both of us in being each other’s dear and trusted friend. Then we’d pak-a-snak and stroll to the local playground, typically by way of one of the four intervening coffeeshops or two delis, to get a cup of tar for daddy and a clear plastic apple of juice for monkey, and maybe a cookie or scone to share as well. Thus fortified, we’d broach the little park and unleash ourselves - J to his romping, and me to my slurping of overheated caffeine. J attacked the facilities with gusto, heedless of social stricture and barely mindful of my minding him, dashing from swings to structure to sandbox as his exceptionally free spirit moved him. He played with everything and everybody; I even formed nodding acquaintances with some of the other moms and nannies whose regular schedules overlapped ours.
After ninety minutes or so of playtime I’d force J to move on - a challenge I overcame with the promise of shopping. He loves the little market with its bright awning and plastic baskets, its stacks of vibrant produce and barrels of brown rice and rose hips, and especially its rolling baker’s cart of fresh puri bread, puffy and tender and redolent. He’d rush up, grab a set of bakery tongs and wrench out a little loaf before I could even catch up to him, handing it proudly to me so I could tear him off a morsel to nibble as we wandered about. That way, at least, I knew where one of his hands was. We’d stockpile fruits and veggies; I’d enlist his help to pick the perfect pineapple or to choose between broccoli and brussel sprouts. Then we’d finish up with a spin through the aisle of jars and boxes, and finally a quick survey of the cornucopic candy section - hundreds of Russian chocolate bars, Latvian jawbreakers, Ukrainian whatnots… We rarely got any of these but sometimes we did anyway, to share with the family after supper or to scarf surreptitiously on the short stroll home. Then - back to the house, a quick lunch, a change of undergarments (his, usually), and K would arrive back from her morning’s labors just in time to drive us all downtown and drop me at my office. There they’d leave me to my official devices and my work week would begin - a week during which I’d arrive home late most every evening and barely see the kids at all. So Monday mornings were particularly sweet.
Last Monday I was on vacation. Next Monday is a holiday; that Tuesday J starts at the new school, where he’ll be in attendance on Monday mornings thenceforward. So I guess two weeks ago I had my last lazy kid-care Monday, and I didn’t even realize it. That’s okay, I guess - had I been thinking of how it was the last time, I wouldn’t have been fully attentive to the experience itself. I’d have been living at a remove, pre-remembering. So it’s for the best that this snuck up on me. But I don’t want to forget:
As we were leaving the little market that last time, J asked for a lollypop and I agreed to get him one. I mentioned it to the willowy blonde at the register and, with eyes of Siberian ice, she included it in our tally. Afterwards, laden with bulging sacks of groceries, I waddled to the candy counter to get the little mini-lolly with which I was familiar, but I couldn’t find one. When I inquired I was directed to a small display of maxi-lollies, patterned like a cross-section slice of lemon and nearly as large. I was aghast but J was delighted. Recognizing that this was a predicament that admitted only surrender, not protest, I plucked the item in question from the counter and handed it over. With glee J lapped at the sugary sourness all the way home, careful not to drop it even once. But once home had been attained he handed it back to me, quite sensibly, saying, “For later, daddy.”
For later, J-dog. And forever. The loss is a little sour, but the sweetness of the memory more than makes up for it.
