first day of school

My heart feels like a sinking bag of sand, pulling downward in my liquid chest cavity. At the same time, there is a giggle inside of me I have been suppressing since this morning. It pushes in the opposite direction, upwards, sliding past self-involved organs and tapping at my esophagus, inching towards my pursed lips.

Terra started school today. Yeah. School. She’s 2.8-years-old and she is attending the Tzu Chi Great Love Pre-School where she will not be taught any sort of religious curriculum but she will receive two hours of Mandarin language instruction daily.

I got out of my truck in front of her school today and the sinking bag caught the giggle right in my throat and formed a lump the size of my neck. Suddenly I could not believe what was happening. Something deep inside of me was screaming at myself to turn back. Why was I doing this?

I definitely think I am a loon just for going to work every day instead of spending most of my time with my daughter. I rationalize it all. I am a capitalist, after all. I think I must work, more and more in fact, to provide for her as I should, as I owe her.

If it is true that the cave man spent 95% of his time at leisure, perhaps he had a great relationship with his daughter but wouldn’t he have been better served to go out and figure out how to farm?

Why would I do this to Terra? I thought about what this day represented to her. No more pajamas until 10am. No more Dragon Tails. No more walks downtown to the pet store with her Auntie Cherish. No more just being there, at home, with an Aunt as a sitter while Faith and I worked. No more.

This is the obligation of life setting in on my daughter. It will be my son’s turn next but for now, he is still hanging out with our zero-to-two baby sitter, trying to cut some teeth and learning how to crawl. Terra, on the other hand, will forever be an object in motion now. She will attend school five days per week. Later she will have after-school activities. Then college will encroach upon her and she will add labs and social events. Eventually she will join the work force. She will feel obligated, (to whatever degree,) to get up every day and go to work. She will have several jobs, some of which she will like a great deal, and some of which she will not like at all. She’ll have some bad bosses and some difficult mornings and some professional crises.

She will know fully what it is to be human. And yeah, that is a beautiful thing but it’s also a painful and ugly thing. It hurts like hell. People will die in her life. (I will die one day and she will weep.) Terra will be obliged to attend funerals. She will also visit hospitals where birth has just taken place. As much as she knows happiness and ecstasy, she will know sadness and despair. She will know them in equal proportion though hopefully not in equal portion.

And this is where it all begins. One day, you get up and go to school. The next thing you know, you’ve been going to school for as long as you can remember and it’s time to work, (though the difference will be barely perceptible.)

I feel like I could cry for all the pain that awaits my sweet little girl. She is so full of hope and energy, and she loves freely and exemplifies my world view. And the joy that awaits her too, is like a giant wave of goodness that will bathe her life in unique, interesting and thoughtful colors.

A friend from work called this the beginning of Terra's existentialist journey. I like the sound of that. Maybe I am dreaming of the realities of life encroaching on the life of my beloved daughter, or maybe I am the reality of life imagining this little man who sends his daughter to pre-school then feels melancholy about releasing her to herself.