Separation Pangs

She has finished a year of school already. It seems like just yesterday that we were busying ourselves for N’s first day. She was all of 2 years and 4 months....

The entire household is a bundle of nerves. The husband has taken half a day off to participate in this momentous occasion, his longest break since an over-zealous attempt to connect with the younger lot at an inter-office cricket match went wrong 5 years ago. The only connection made on said occasion was with the orthopaedic surgeon at the friendly neighbourhood hospital.

Today is a much more traumatic day. Everything little N may need for her 2 ½ hours away from home is packed and ready – finger food, spoon food, health food, junk food, favourite toy, neighbour’s kids favourite toy, first aid kit (like a school with 200 kids would not have considered getting one!), our only family photograph in which all of us are smiling (lest she forget what her parents look like in those 2 ½ hours), and change of clothes that may be considered rather excessive even for a child stranded on a deserted island.

Had N been a little older or wiser she would have suspected us of packing her out of our lives for good!

Despite months of planning and rehearsing this day in our heads, we are running 20 minutes late and accusing fingers are pointing in all directions. With two MBAs and proven organisational capabilities and time management skills between the three of us, the only who appears anywhere close to capable or skilled is the one without the degree or track record. She watches her animated parents in action with the same rapt attention she pays a Tom and Jerry show.

All attempts at creating the impression of responsible and respectable parents are defeated, crushed and thrown out of the proverbial window when we eventually walk into school, 35 minutes late, all nerves and still arguing. To top it, we scrutinise the teachers, staff, other kids, their parents, their hair, their toe nails, spoken language and body language with the same paranoia that one might display when trapped in a roomful of convicted felons.

While we were in the midst of being reassured on the high standards of hygiene and the capabilities of the staff for the 77th time, N has decided to make herself comfortable in a corner of the classroom and was already experimenting with the play-way method of learning : she was studying the combined effect of glue and poster colours on her taste buds. My own taste buds were going into spasms right then. I think I will need to give home-schooling serious consideration.

We are told to leave and to be back two hours later. We don’t. We lurk, first outside the classroom, then outside the corridor and finally outside the gates, till the security guard, not the friendliest I have seen, forcibly removes us from the vicinity. We are left with little choice but to circle the school block in our car. We are lucky no suspicious neighbour had alerted the cops by this time.

Two hours and a empty fuel tank later, we return to pick up what we imagine would be a distraught and crying N. But out walks little Ms Sunshine, after planting a kiss here and a hug there, in no seeming hurry to rush into the arms of the nervous wreck her parents are.

Well, I don’t know what troubled me more – the extent of my separation pangs from the child or the child’s lack of the same!

I had a lot to learn about my kids, but am not sure if  I am ready yet.