daddy / daycare

This is a guest blog entry by P, father of J and partner to L. As always, all critical comments, especially on grammar and syntax, will be ignored.

J started part-time child care this week, more than a year after our first aborted attempt to have him begin the lifelong hell of dealing with other people, aka socialization (see Sartre, Beckett, etc). As you might remember, that first go lasted all of three hours, during which J was sleeping for two and a half. In the waking 30 or so minutes, he managed to cause enough damage to warrant a phone call for me to pick him up, in which he was called names that I wouldn’t call a dog by a mangy middle-aged woman.

Needless to say, we were a bit burned. And very, very nervous about enrolling him at the child care center at L’s school, which came highly touted by everyone. But, as the entry age of 2 years, 3 months got closer, we knew we had to make another go at it, or L’s dissertation, my new job, and our sanity might be permanently marred.

So L dropped him off on Monday. There were about 15 kids from 2.3 to 5 years old in a medium-sized playroom. And about 5 adults. We like that ratio, thinking it might keep J’s animal side in check, more than that bad-mouthed lady of a year ago, at least. And after a few minutes, they separated into even smaller groups, with J in a group of about 5 with 2 adults.

And then L left, to go pay the tuition and ostensibly to work on her dissertation for three hours until picking him up again. And waited for her cell phone to ring, saying we had to pick him up and take him away and throw him into the jungle where he belonged.

The phone never rang. L picked him up as he ate his lunch at a table with several other kids. The lovely teacher, Ms. S, said he had a pretty good first day: there had been a few bouts of tears, especially when J realized that Mama was gone. But he’d played well and hard, and was doing fine. And then the same thing happened Wednesday.

Friday, alas, was my day to drop him off. When he started bawling as soon as he entered the room, Ms. S pointed out that I had the harder job than L--J now understood, as it had been repeated, that he was to be left parentless for an extended period of time. J cried loudly, screaming at me in sloppy, budding J English that I dare not leave or, or, or...

As I was sitting next to him, rubbing his back and trying helplessly to distract him with a toy truck, a boy a little older, maybe 4, came over and started rubbing J’s back as well, saying, “It’s OK, J, don’t cry.” And then a girl of about that age came over with a paper towel and began rubbing J’s eyes, drying his tears (if a little roughly). While these efforts had little effect on J’s tantrum, they brought tears to my eyes, and hope. That this place might work out. And that in a year or so, J might be the one trying to comfort another.