Time Stumbles Forward
Walking into preschool—and anxiety—during the pandemic.
BY JONAH HALL
AFTER LIVING TOGETHER for twelve years, we decided we were ready—and getting too old to wait much longer. We started down the path that includes reckoning with your childhood in a deeper, less narcissistic way than you can imagine. Some prepare as much as possible, by reading about stages of development and dangers and baby communication. Some prepare by building things or painting rooms or buying things. We read. We painted. We bought. But there’s no real preparation. There’s only who you were before the baby arrived, and then who you become along the way as you learn how to hold, then nourish, then feed, then soothe that fierce yet tiny creature.
I had no experience with babies or toddlers before our daughter arrived, but I knew she was what I needed and wanted. Maybe that’s unusual for a man to say. I needed to become a father. My parents divorced before I had any conscious memories, before I turned two. My father was not absent from my life, but he was absent from our home. His home changed a few times. I have vague memories of trudging up steps to an apartment. I have stronger memories of a house that included my dad’s second wife, Patti. Driving to the town with a funny name that wasn’t very close to Mom’s house. By the time I was nine or ten, he settled into a quiet house on a cul-de-sac. It was about a forty-five-minute drive to get there from Mom’s house. It was sometimes faster to go around Boston on the weekend mornings, but it was better to go through the city on Sunday evenings. We’d pass giant water towers, and the Boston Garden, then the tunnel, and be back in Arlington by dinner. At least I think we’d eat dinner back with Mom.
Every Saturday morning there was a sense of optimism coming from the driver’s seat. Friendly banter and talk about what we would do that weekend. Every Sunday night, there was a heavier quality to the air. The weight of impending separation. Both a heavy and hollow feeling. A sense of anxiety added to by the piled-up homework that awaited me after dinner. Everything I’d put off since Friday afternoon. Sometimes those drives were peaceful and music added a layer of comfort. It’s easy to stare out of a window as the world flies past. One life at home. One life on basketball courts and baseball diamonds and tennis courts. One life in classrooms. One life at Dad’s house. One life as a passenger staring out a window at the gray blur of barren landscape that is Massachusetts in winter.
I don’t go back to old memories very often these days. The last twelve-hundred or so days have been occupied with new memories. From her bassinet by our bed…to the crib in her room…to her attempts at scaling her crib...to the crib with one half-open side so she could climb in and out on her own…to the floor bed with a full-size mattress that she jumps around on like a little monkey. She’s over three feet tall now, with legs that stretch for miles.
HOURS AGO, I felt a wave of raw emotion pass through me. There’s a numbness to quarantine that can wash over the days, matching the overcast mornings we’ve seen in the last month. Introspection has been harder to come by, as a kind of mental fog can take over.
She starts her new preschool tomorrow. She is about to become a ducky. One of nine little ones, learning how to be around each other. We visited the classroom today. A teacher wore a mask and a face shield and scanned our temperatures before we entered the school building, which looks like a little house. The school is made up of five separate little houses, one for each of the age groups. Rebelle Harmony is right in the middle. She was so eager to be back in a classroom she could hardly stand it. As soon as we got inside she took off her shoes and her little cat hoodie and got busy investigating the various bins of toys. As I ran around with her on the wonderful playground (Bay Area playgrounds have been closed down and caution-taped since late March), I was filled with happiness for her, but soon our time was up. Our meeting over, and Mama had to get back to a busy work day. We stopped at the Wendy’s drive-thru and ate in the car, since getting her in and out of the house has become an elaborate negotiation. After a brief walk and play-time with our neighbor and their little girl, we drove for our daily car nap. The car is the only way to get her to nap now, and I don’t mind driving, especially on a windy, hilly, picturesque road, so that’s what we’ve done nearly every day for the last three months.
I’m tempted to go through the phases of our life over the last nine months. Life has been tumultuous since November. But it’s easier to think of each phase like a faraway image seen from a passenger seat.
Rebelle Harmony started attending the first preschool in mid-August last year. That experience was really her first time meeting and getting to know new children and adults other than us. As East Coast transplants, we don’t have family in the area, except for my dad and his wife, who spend half of the year in India. For all the attempts at meet-ups and Gymboree fun-time and toddler music class, that preschool was her first new, independent place…and it wasn’t always going well.
Her separation anxiety was pretty severe at first. Fortunately, I dropped her off on the way to a morning teaching job, so I didn’t have time to dwell on my own separation from her. I had spent the days with her since Mama returned to work at two months. Now my daughter was two years and two months old, and I was ready to piece my adult life back together with teaching and a coffee-sipping morning commute. Without commutes, so many of us long for free-thinking independent time. She gradually warmed to the transition and walked over to the morning circle time on her own, instead of giving me sad eyes and clinging to my shoulders.
A few months later, the classroom turned sideways. Teachers and assistants left. The tiny toddlers brought in various colds. The colds turned to flus. Sniffles were everywhere. We all got sick. Maybe it started as another seasonal flu, but it wrecked us all in December and floored me again in February. By the time everything shut down in March, I was finally on the upswing. I had worked through the winter, but was not healthy for most of it.
We dealt with the adjustments of working from home, but most of it wasn’t working well. We created a bubble with a family up the street who had a boy a year older than Rebelle Harmony. He encouraged her to run and to discover and break out of her shell. He was hyper-verbal and asked me endless questions. It was a great situation for a while, keeping both families from losing it as we got to know each other. After a month or so, nerves started to fray. The adjustment to confinement, to widespread uncertainty and to the stoppages of sports and restaurants and playgrounds! It wasn’t easy for anyone, but at least we were healthy. Those friends ended up moving, and we’ve lost connection. Our other parent friends moved back East. That one was a gut-punch. I’d imagined our two little girls going to school together, growing up together…even being depressed teenage artists together. Sometimes having an active imagination is a terrible thing, as it keeps you from staying in the present. Going back to my own issues with attachment, maybe I can’t help but get ahead of myself.
The last two months have been brutal. Rebelle Harmony hasn’t slept well. She gets up and wants to climb into our bed. We walk her back. We settle her. We leave. She cries and gets up. Attachment is a complicated phenomenon. Teaching your fast-growing little girl to become independent in a world that has shrunk from wide-open possibilities to narrow one-way streets, with few other kids to run around with...it’s counter-intuitive. Like all parents at home with their only children: I am her playmate, her driver, her chef, her cleaner, her guide, and her teacher.
Tomorrow, I will go back to being her driver. It’s the best thing for her. I am thrilled to imagine her making new friends and learning how to play and share and listen…but damn! The adjustment is going to take time for me.
