I Couldn't See My Fifth Grader When He Was Five

Can I just tell you all that one of the best decisions we've made as parents was the one where we didn't send our barely five-year-old to kindergarten? Oh how we struggled to make that choice. He'd been in preschool for two years already and was doing just fine. He wasn't the smartest kid but he certainly wasn't the dumbest. He had a vocabulary that rivaled some second graders and enough self-confidence to insure success at the next level. And so, as I've written about before, we struggled with the decision.

We talked. We examined all angles. We waffled. I might have even agonized a bit over the choice. He certainly wasn't unready. In fact, by all measurables, he was ready. Something stopped us though. Something (or Someone) made us decide to wait--a decision that a large number of teachers have since validated, not just for our child but for almost every late summer* born child, especially boys.

We weren't actually thinking about kindergarten or first grade or even fourth grade. We were thinking about middle school and high school. We were thinking of the kid who wouldn't be eligible to get his driver's license until the rest of his grade had long been behind the wheel. We were thinking of giving every advantage to the kid who might want to play sports. We were thinking of the guy who would--with our decision--be a year older before he had to take the SATs or decide where he wanted to go to college.

We weren't thinking about our fifth grader.

I didn't know that the class one year ahead of him would loom over him with a great deal of height and general largeness. Granted, my husband is vertically challenged so I assumed Garrett wouldn't be tall, but I didn't think about all the other kids who would be. I didn't know he'd be so slight in stature so that, even having one of the very earliest birthdays in his entire grade level, he'd stand roughly average with the rest of them.

I didn't know that Troy and I would sit around one night, discussing Garrett's confidence, talking about how he is a leader in his grade level. We would also be talking about how he appears to fit in fine with the grade ahead of him as well. He's not shy around them and doesn't defer to their maturity because he's the same exact age as some of them. We didn't realize, when we made this choice, that we were setting him up for social success.

That's not at all meant to toot our horns in the slightest. We beat a dead horse with discussion. We prayed through this decision and felt led to the one we made. I know not everyone will make the same choice and that's okay. Maybe your barely five year old is ready and will always be ready and will never struggle with not being ready. Personally, I am already lamenting Will's unfortunate early June birthday. If it was May, of course I'd start him at five. If it was July, I wouldn't.

But I do think, regardless of what you might decide for your own child, that when to start school should be well thought out. It shouldn't be something you just do because, by golly, they turned five. Consider your child. Consider where they might be in ten years. I'm only one voice but I wouldn't change my decision if I could. The only thing I'd do differently is that I would forget about worrying about it. 

I imagine that the time could come where I'd wish I could go back and start him at five, but in five years of living with this choice, I've never regretted it once. Instead, I have seen (and many teachers have given me) validation upon validation that we made the right choice.

So that's my two cents. In case anyone was struggling with what to do with their late summer birthday baby.

*I realize that July 20 is not actually late summer. But it was when our school was on year round and 3/4 of the school was going to start on July 25.

Since You've Been Gone

This time of year is hard for me. I try to pretend it isn't. I hope for the year when it just comes and then goes and I look back and realize I forgot to be sad. But that year is not yet. Instead, I count the days until the day. I think about how one split second took me from eager anticipation to destruction. That moment where the what-might-be's turned into might-have-beens*. I wish I'd been doing something extraordinary, something I'd never do again, something that wouldn't forever remind me of the phone call. I wasn't. I was sitting on my bed, my laptop open on my legs. Exactly as I am now. Three years later.

God has blessed us so extravagantly in the years since. I never could have dreamed that I'd be loving my girl's biological brother, but here we are. I did somehow think that would soften the blow of grief but it did not, really. In many ways, it just makes me want her more. To be here with him. With all of us.

I guess time numbs the pain. The days fade into years and that is both comforting and devastating. I wonder of the time when her grave is bare and no one stops by to clean the dirt off and leave a toy or flower. I know that day will come--when we are all old and senile-- but it is not now. It is not yet. For now, her impact continues to shake us all. 

I think often of the 24 inch casket beneath the grass. I think of all that she would be by now. And on this day I relive it all. The crushing weight of sadness. The broken heart that I'm beginning to understand will never beat exactly right again. The feeling of her body in my arms just the one time. The flowers. The journey. The enduring love I have for a child I never saw with my own eyes.

This post, about her beautiful service, is one of my favorites. It reminds me of the outpouring of love we had and of the beautiful way my God said, "I am El Roi, the God who sees."

*Some Other Me from the Broadway musical If/Then by Tom Kitt

Insurance

Recently, my son was asking me how insurance works. Specifically, he wanted to know exactly how big our life insurance policies are. So, I mean, I guess if we turn up dead in the near future, interrogate him for a hot minute. I explained life insurance and car insurance, homeowner's and renter's insurance. I even talked about how there are things like earthquake insurance if you live in, well, California. I don't know if that's a thing anywhere else.You know what I didn't educate my 5th grade son about? Domino's carryout insurance.

When I first saw the commercial a month or so ago, I was absolutely dumbfounded. Was this a problem people were having? It's not outside the realm of my imagination that a pizza would be dropped here or there, but enough to offer actual insurance on pies? 

Even more odd, to me, is the fact that it's only being offered for a limited time. I mean, if we all agree that pizza misfortune is a common problem (we don't, by the way, we don't agree to this at all) then why the limited time? 

Life insurance! Get it while you can! It's only good for a limited time. Car insurance for 2018 only. After that you're up a creek. Can you imagine? This is the most bizarre idea I've ever heard of, maybe.

"I'm not sure why sales are down, J. Patrick Doyle. I know we need a new gimmick to compete with all the other pizza takeout places. HOW ABOUT PIZZA INSURANCE? I mean, it works for Californians with their earthquakes. And, I mean, what if an ACTUAL EARTHQUAKE damaged a pizza? We should definitely reimburse them. For a limited time only, of course," Bob the Delivery Boy said.

"Great idea, Bob the Delivery Boy," J. Patrick Doyle responded. "Let's work up some commercials that won't make people laugh hysterically but will make them pause with confusion."

I can't see how this is going to increase traffic to Domino's. If I was deciding between two places, I'd go with proximity to my home and cost of the pizza. I wouldn't drive to Domino's because they offer crazy insurance. I do feel, however, that now that I've written about it and thoroughly expressed the fact that it is not needed, I'll drop my next pizza right on its face. And it won't be from Domino's.

They Told Me There Would Be Tea

So. Usually I watch some TV on New Year's Eve. At least enough to see the ball drop. I've only thought minimally about my bucket list. Write a book. Visit every state. Go to Italy. Visit the Florida Keys. Spend New Year's Eve in Times Square. Basically, my bucket list is traveling.

I can't say why, exactly, I want to spend New Year's in Time Square. It looks miserable and freezing cold. I do not enjoy being miserable or freezing cold. I want to spend New Year's in Time Square the way people want to climb Everest. To say I did it. Not because I actually think the experience would be even slightly enjoyable. And Times Square seems a lot less strenuous than actually climbing Everest. And so, I turn the TV on and I watch the ball drop, thinking of a day when I can cross this particular challenge off my list.

This year, though, I never even turned the TV on. My middle son started vomiting again. He, at nearly nine, has never been known to throw up into a toilet. Or a trash can. Or, even, a bathtub. No. He just hurls his guts wherever he happens to be. It is as though he has no physical warning whatsoever. My oldest has been effectively throwing up into a toilet since he was three. Not Matthew though. He prefers the car. Or the staircase. Or, most recently, ALL OVER THE PANTRY. Let me explain that there is a trash can less than two feet away from the pantry. Still, my son decided to hurl all over two shelves and the floor of the place we keep our food. This resulted in Troy and me scrubbing our pantry on New Year's Eve. Meanwhile, Matthew threw up again. This time he got it into a bowl. But then he spilled the bowl all over the floor. You can't make this stuff up.

We cleaned barf. We cleaned the child. He was so very sad at the early end to his New Year's Eve when, at 10:00, we set up a bed for him in the bathroom, with a toilet directly to the right and a bowl directly to the left. I spent a little time with my sister-in-law, niece and nephew, who are visiting and then went to check on Matthew. He was fine but couldn't sleep because he was lonely and his New Year's Eve was cut tragically and unfairly short. The world was a mess, the year, a total loss. I told him I'd stay with him.

Eventually, he fell asleep and I went down to pour cider and holler, "Happy New Year!" And the whole entire point of this mess of vomit and Times Square drivel is that I completely missed the whole Mariah Carey Situation.

I did, however, catch up the next morning. Let me just say that the thing about Mariah Carey is you're never sure if she's trying to be funny and not quite getting there or if she's really and truly one of the biggest divas on the planet.

"They told me there would be tea. Oh. It's a disaster. Ok. Well, we'll just have to rough it. Imma be like everybody else with no hot tea."

There are so many gems there that I just want to thank Mariah Carey for giving me such amazing catch phrases as we move into 2018. I can hear the conversations now.

Troy: We're out of cereal.
Me: Oh. It's a disaster. Ok. Well, we'll just have to rough it.

Me: Can you change Will?
Troy: No hot tea.

I mean, I wonder where she thought this tea would be. She turns around to look for it behind her. This leads me to believe that it would have had to have been there BEFORE her first song. It was 8 degrees outside and it was reported that it felt like -6 with the wind chill. She sang for four minutes. #coldtea. Also, she is wearing only slightly more than nothing. She really looks like she's roughing it out there on the frontier, the way our ancestors did. It is as though, for a split second, she realized that she was a person just like everyone else who was standing on the streets of New York. An actual human, she is. Forced to sing another song and get paid a ridiculous amount of money before she could procure some tea for herself. Oh the great tragedy of it all.

Or, maybe she was just trying to be funny. I have no idea. I don't understand the lifestyle of the rich and famous.

I did, however, discover that Mariah Carey took the stage at roughly the same time Matthew spewed his guts all over my pantry. Twenty minutes later, when he was sitting on my bathroom floor, covered in his spilled bowl vomit, I went to him. His face was dripping with regurgitation. In my mind, though I never would have said anything like this to my sick child, I've rewritten the conversation between us.

Matthew: My life is over. The world is a terrible place. I am sick on New Year's Eve. I CAN'T EVEN at the injustice of it all.
Me: I'm sorry that you have to stay up here on the bathroom floor while the rest of us eat brownies and ice cream and watch movies and enjoy New Year's Eve. It's really a shame that you're throwing up again!
Matthew: (blinks) They told me there would be tea.