Potties & Pirates

On Thursday, I took Henry for a mini-interview at the Y for their Preschool Summer Camps. Kids are supposed to be at least 3 years old and potty-trained. When I told Henry on Monday he could go to Pirate Camp if he used the potty, he spent the next two days running around naked or in underwear rushing to the potty and proving all I had to do was dangle “Pirate Camp” in front of him to do away with diapers. Each time he went I gushed over him. When he’d catch me using the “big girl potty” he told me how proud he was of me. A week of no accidents and 1/4 the diapers was lovely, if not homebound.

At the Y, we interrupted play time. Henry ran in, saw what the kids were doing, then ran back to the door, took off his shoes (although every other kid was shoe-d) and hung up his jacket. Then he ran back to the trains and dug in. Because we came in the middle, there was only ten minutes left to play and when asked to clean up, Henry was not quite done with these new toys. He eventually got over it and helped put things away. The other children watched him with tilted heads and squinting eyes. “I’m Henry,” he’d tell them when he made eye contact.

We were invited to stay for snack time and Henry sat in between a little girl with curls, Molly C, and a hyper boy in a striped shirt, Gus. The kids talked as they ate their pretzel sticks, popcorn and watermelon. I helped insert straws into juice boxes. Henry tried to contribute to the conversation and, for the first time, I felt protective of his emotions.

“I watched a movie yesterday,” Henry added when they talked about watching Finding Nemo.

Molly C eyed him frowning and I thought, You think your shit don’t stink, Molly C?

“You weren’t here! I don’t know you!” Gus yelled. Back off, kid! He's trying to connect!!

A stuttering boy from the other table leaned back in his mini-seat offering, “I…I…I…I w-w-w-atch movies, t-t-too.”

I wanted to move Henry from the big table to next to this awkward boy, but I took two steps back fast-forwarding my brain through middle-school and high school imagining my child.

“Is he going to be the weird kid?” I asked Jared later as I recounted the story.

“He’ll be fine,” he reassured me.

It’s hard to picture your two and a half-year-old – a boy obsessed with saying “Poop” who runs around naked with his hand up his bum – a part of a school community, having friendships and being in a classroom. My heart already hurts a little for my big boy. The girl that might say “No” to him for prom. The elementary school boys who will make fun of him for ever watching (and loving) Sophia the First and Tangled. The team he won’t make or the part in the play he won’t get.

And the silence. The silence I’m sure I’ll get when all these things happen. I can’t imagine silence from him at this point. He tells me when he’s mad at me or nervous or thinks I’m being mean or when something is fun. He remembers everything and brings things up randomly. He is… always talking. Any quiet now is when he’s hiding behind the chair with the dry-erase board erasers making the carpet camouflaged with black smears. Or barricading himself with chairs under the kitchen table while he practices with scissors. But even then he’s snickering.

I’d thought of summer camp as a chance for him to get out of the house and for me to nap. Who knew I’d go Breakfast Club on the poor kid!?

Departures and Arrivals

Sunday, 15 of my girls graduated. By Monday afternoon, all 15 were moved out. That only leaves 25 girls and by this time next week, they’ll be gone, too. It was a crazy, chaotic weekend of tears, last-minute packing and flash flood warnings. The graduation ended up outside in 90% humidity. Out of the top ten students in the senior class, four of them were my girls.

There are some I will miss (already miss) and others who left bags of trash and drawers with hairballs in their rooms. There are so many things on the “Now We Know & Can Do Better Next Year” list and while I’ve accrued some tips (I’m now an expert at mailing large boxes at a very, small post office), me thinks the end of the year will always embody a certain amount of madness. The recycling of notebooks and returning of internet chords. Room keys and broken vacuums. Passports and bags & bags & bags (& bags) of discarded hangers. Wet towels left hanging on the backs of doors like shed skins. Empty, rickety shoe racks yawning into hallways. Oozing shampoo bottles hidden under sinks, the melted remainders of rushed mornings.

The underclassmen observed the panic and, in some cases, were left to deal with the abandoned fridges or hole-punched confetti left under desks. I told them to make it easy on themselves. To pack a box every day this week and take out trash bags as they make them, using the seniors as a cautionary tale. And they nodded. But we shall see come next Monday and Tuesday if they learned anything from the past weekend.

And we shall next year if I’ve learned anything from the past year. Next year, over half the dorm will be new girls. Already we’ve started planning for the ESL program, which, in its second year, they’ve asked me to direct. Already we’re discussing the changes to our dorm structure for next year and discussing how the dorm program will look. Oh yeah, and I guess I should start preparing for Front Loader Gilbert McCannell. Although if Henry taught me anything, it’s that “preparation” isn’t applicable and any attempt at such is fairly futile.

Today, the most important thing of the summer was taken care of: the air conditioning was installed.