I Don’t Want To Talk About My Kid Starting TK Next Year
I’m sitting at my kitchen table right now, staring at an open email tab with the subject line “2024 TK Orientation: Save the Date!” that I’ve been ignoring for three days. Next to my laptop is a half bowl of cold Kraft mac and cheese that my four-year-old abandoned 20 minutes ago because he saw a butterfly out the window and ran outside. There’s a crayon mark on the edge of the table that I haven’t scrubbed off yet, even though I’ve been meaning to, because it’s his, and I don’t mind it that much right now. I found one of his tiny newborn socks stuck under the couch last week, too, threw it in the donate bag, then fished it back out 10 minutes later and stuffed it in the back of my junk drawer. I don’t know why I kept it. It’s not like he’ll ever fit it again.
Everyone keeps telling me it’s no big deal. It’s just TK. Half days, play-based, it’s just to get them used to the routine before kindergarten, what’s there to panic about? My sister said I’m being dramatic, that when her kid started TK she cried for 10 minutes in the parking lot then went and got a manicure and had the best day of her life. My mom keeps bringing up how I’ll finally have time to deep clean the bathroom and finish that painting project I started last year, like that’s some kind of grand prize I’ve been waiting for. Even the pediatrician, when I mentioned it at his checkup last week, just smiled and said “He’s ready, you’ll be ready too.”
We went to the optional open house last month, just to walk around the campus and meet the teacher. I parked, held his hand walking in, and the second I stepped into the classroom I froze. There were all these tiny little chairs lined up in a circle, little cubbies with empty name tags waiting to be taped up, a bin of blocks that looked exactly like the ones we have at home but they smelled like school and lemon disinfectant. My kid let go of my hand immediately and ran over to the playdough table, started squishing blue playdough into a lopsided ball, and I just stood by the door clutching my canvas tote bag like it was a life raft. The head teacher came over and asked if I needed anything, and I mumbled that I just had something in my eye, wiped my cheek on my sleeve, and went to stand by the window where no one could see me. That’s how silly this is. I’m crying into my sleeve at an open house for a half-day program that doesn’t even start for another eight months.
For the record, I’m not one of those moms that lives for every snuggle and never gets tired. I yell when he dumps an entire bottle of maple syrup on his pancakes for fun. I sigh when he asks me to read Go, Dog. Go! for the seventh time in one day. I drop him off at my mom’s house every other Saturday so I can nap and watch trashy reality TV alone. I’ve complained for years that I never have two consecutive hours to get any actual work done. I’ve daydreamed about quiet grocery runs where I don’t have to distract him from stealing grapes out of the produce bin. Now that that’s actually around the corner, I don’t want it. I don’t know how that happened.
I measured him for the application last week. You have to put their current height and weight on the form. I stood him against the door frame where I’ve marked all his growth spurts, and he was three inches taller than he was the last time I marked it, six months ago. I stood there with the pencil in my hand, and I almost wrote down the old height. It was stupid, I know, but for a second it felt like if I wrote the smaller number, he’d stay that small a little longer. He still asks me to cut his grapes into quarters, even though his dentist told us two months ago he’s old enough to eat whole grapes. I cut them anyway. What if I stop cutting them one day, and suddenly he doesn’t need me for anything anymore?
I saw a woman at the playground last week whose kid is in TK this year. She came over and started chatting, said how great it is, how her kid learned to write his name in three months, how she gets so much done now. I nodded and smiled and agreed that it sounded great, and then as soon as she left I went and sat in my car with the AC on for five minutes because my throat felt all tight and I didn’t want her to see me being weird.
I think what I’m going to miss most isn’t the big milestone stuff, it’s the useless messy days. The days where we don’t leave the house, we stay in pajamas until 1pm, we build a fort out of old moving boxes that collapses 10 minutes after we finish it, we eat popsicles for snack even when it’s too cold outside. Those are the days I don’t get back. Starting next year, most of those days will be gone. He’ll be at school, I’ll be here working, and it’ll be quiet. I’m scared of how quiet it’ll be.
Right now, he just yelled from the front yard “Mama! Come see the caterpillar I found on the rose bush!” I should go. I know this is normal. I know he’s ready, he’s been asking to go to “big kid school” like the neighbor’s kid for months. I know I’ll probably have a good day the first day, I’ll get a bunch of work done, maybe go get coffee alone, and I’ll cry in the car when I pick him up, and he’ll show me a lopsided paper flower he made, and that’ll be that. I don’t have a big lesson here, I don’t have some inspiring takeaway about how time flies and you have to cherish every moment. That phrase makes me want to throw something, honestly. I don’t cherish every moment. I just cherish this one, right now, where he’s still my little kid that needs me to come look at caterpillars and cut his grapes. I’m just not ready to talk about TK yet. That’s all. (Word count: 1128)
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