now fortified with impotent fury!risperdal

I had a vague notion, in the back of my mind, that cub scouts started…sometime. I regard Boy Scouts with something somewhere between ‘distaste’ and ‘rabid, ardent, strident disapproval’. I don’t agree with their policies towards non-heterosexuals nor towards atheists and agnostics. The Lad- who actually was a scout for a time- believes heartily in many of the things Boy Scouts teaches, but not in their policies. But he also believes in steering the kid and not mandating (please note, steering can involve detailed discussions which pretty much leave only One Option That’s Reasonable, but show me a 6 year old who’s reasonable all the time and I’ll show you Haley Joel Osment as a creepy ass bot).

But I thought that cub scouts start at age 7, so we’d dodged a bullet. Right? WRONG. SO VERY VERY WRONG. I had an inkling we were in for it when I noticed the grown man in full on boy scout uniform (and when I say grown man, I mean, 45 year old dude. And btw, has anyone noticed the disquieting similarity of the adult boy scout shirt to, say, the brownshirts?) at the back to school ice cream social. The sinking feeling in my gut redoubled when I saw the guy in Sean’s classroom because his son is in that room too. And then I found out he’s married to one of the higher ups in the PTA, and they’re in our neighborhood and oh fuck. Sean is going to get jumped into the gang any day now.

So I was ducking and dodging Sean’s questions about the signs which sprung up on the path to school. And feinting side to side when he brought home fliers. But today I went out to get the mail, and there’s a dvd and popcorn waiting for us, telling us to enjoy watching “A Family’s Dream!” and come on down to the scout info meeting, and it is like the heinous combination of the ardor of fundamentalists on my doorstep merged with the marketing mojo and conformity of Disney, and I find myself getting angry. Angry at what an overwhelming presence it is. Angry that with their signs and fliers and stuff handed directly to Sean they are recruiting him and circumventing us (after all. what parent’s going to say no to a child who comes home begging to do something as wholesome as scouts). Angry that they’re using peer pressure.

And I am angry, so very angry that I am going to find myself very shortly explaining to my child that it’s a private club, with its own rules, and that some of those rules exclude people. That those rules would exclude his Uncle M and his Uncle D. That if grams was a boy, she’d be excluded because she won’t say she believes in God for sure. And that as a private club with their own rules, they are allowed to do things like that but that doesn’t mean we have to support it, and that I personally take a stand against organizations like that by not supporting them. I don’t buy their garbage bags, their popcorn, their raffle tickets. That it would hurt me so very deeply to support a group that would exclude my beloved uncles. I won’t say ’so I won’t let you, either’, but I hope he’ll come to his own wise decision. I hope we can find a good alternative. I hope I don’t have to give people who inculcate intolerance into children one red cent.

I hope- and ironically, pray- that we have done a good enough job as parents.

And now, casting aside the poignant reflections of a loving mother as she watches her child grow and blossom…

Oh my god, y’all. The kid’s a first grader. With all the rights, privileges, changes, and goddamn AVALANCHE of paperwork that entails. Yesterday, the first day, went well, with Sean looking faintly shell shocked at the sheer number of kids in the school total and then vaguely shell shocked when I picked him up at just how much they do in a day. But he had fun, he said, and they did math (“easy math” he made sure to add disparagingly). Meanwhile, I have been running around in a haze of dealing with the issues presented by his health file- the additional paperwork I have to do for the after school program (including getting it notarized- who the hell does that any more?), the research into the art materials to make sure all of it uses pigment and not dye- and shelling out money for a nonstop litany of things- school required branded notebooks and school shirts for Spirit Day Fridays! and new glue sticks that aren’t purple and and freaking and. For a free public education this sure as hell costs a lot!

Last Thursday was the ice cream social at the school, to welcome kids back and post who had what teacher, and the rooms were open for an hour so the kids could see the rooms and meet the teachers. I should have known something was up when my conversations went something like this.

“Hi! I’m X. Are you new here?”
“Not new to the area, but new to the school, my son’s in first grade. And you?”
“Oh who does he have?”
“Mrs. B. What about your—”
At this point, the other parent (invariably a mother) would commence to sing hymns of praise regarding Mrs. B, the angels descended, and a heavenly choir chimed in. OR their gaze would narrow, the temperature would drop 20 degrees, and I would be coldly informed that they had not gotten Mrs. B. Unspoken was the ‘and who did you put out for in order to get your kid into that class’. By the time we actually met her, I had visions of a serene Buddha like goddess, gently imparting wisdom and working great miracles of getting small children to tie their shoes, use inside voice, and go home to eat dinner without complaint or commentary that the vegetables were gross, given the whispered reverence people held her in.

Turns out she is a petite woman who has clearly been doing this for 30+ years. She exudes sweet gentility from every pore. I, however, had Mrs. Pitts (of loving memory) for second grade, a grey-haired grandma who, it turns out, had dropped out of school in 7th grade to tend to her passel of siblings upon the death of her father and only, after a hardscrabble life of unhappy marriage and kids, got her GED, put her own damn self through college and grad school, and became the toughest, iron-fist-in-a-she-made-it-herself-thanks velvet glove teacher I ever had, and that’s including college and grad school thanks. Ergo I was not easily fooled by her ice-cream social demeanor. I was richly satisfied when my suspicions were borne out, as I overheard her conversation with the room mother (god forbid there be a room father):

“So we’re going to have to be extremely careful with the parties. I’ve got two peanut kids and one little boy who has a life-threatening allergy to artificial dye, so all those frosted cookies and M&Ms and such, they won’t work.”
The room mother started to protest. It can’t really be that bad she squawked, looking horrified.
And then Mrs. B fixed the room mom with her suddenly not so warm gaze. “Are sprinkles and peanut M&Ms really worth leaving a child out, or worse, sending them to the ER?”

Mrs. Pitts, wherever you are- and I am confident it’s heaven- I heard your voice that night. I look forward to the day my son informs me his teacher is mean for making him do his work well.

Parenthood is a never ending series of earthquakes. Of supernovas, of eruptions. Not in the destructive sense, though there is plenty of that too, but of the world changing, the very firmament being reshaped and fundamentally different. One day the baby is lying there, and the next they have flipped over. And then they crawl, and then they walk, and before you know it they’re dashing out to the car and buckling themselves in.

Today is a flurry of preparations. All those new clothes are washed. The kitchen is ripe with the smell of homemade cookies, crackers, muffins, waffles, as we make batches of things for fast breakfasts and tasty snacks and excellent lunchtime treats. Tomorrow your world changes again, little man. Tomorrow I will drop you off, and you will walk into a new classroom in a new school, filled with new kids and a new teacher. Circle time on the floor is over, and you don’t have a sit at a big blobby table with a bunch of other kids. Now you have a desk, with your name on it. There are textbooks- actual, big kid textbooks as you proudly told me at back to school night- in the built in storage in your desk. You have school supplies and notebooks. Your excitement has grown to epic proportions over the last few days.

Tomorrow, kiddo, you are a first grader. You- my baby, my sweetpea, punk, snarklet, beast child- are starting at the big kid school.

Tomorrow the rhythms of your world will change again, but as with every other change you’ve ever faced, some things won’t change. You will, I hope, still love learning. There will be books and math and science, just more of it and more thoughtfully. Learning is wonderful. Learning is probably the best thing about my job and Daddy’s job: we both get paid, quite frankly, to think and learn a lot. But you’re headed to a new school, and you’re growing up, and in amongst all the other things that won’t change, the most important ones are these: your dad and I have your back. We will always love you. You can bomb a spelling test and spill your milk and forget how to tie your shoelaces and get lost from the front door to your classroom and overflow the toilet with tp and get in trouble for talking when you oughtn’t (I have bets on how long till that happens) and get reprimanded for messing in the basket of math books shelved so temptingly close to your desk and have a horrible no good awful very bad day and we will still love you. We will probably love you even more those days because you will need it. And every 4 foot tall trauma you’re likely to experience, we’ve been there pal, and we’re there for you no matter what.

As for everything else. Well sweetheart, to everything there is a season.