Kindergarten Transitions

An overshare and introduction.

We registered our son for kindergarten this week. It was just a few signatures, identity verification, and it was done. Next up, we get a teacher assignment, visit the Kindergarten orientation, and then then it’ll be the first day of school for our little guy, our Someday.

My husband and I have called our son Someday (in conversations with one another) since the moment we found out we were pregnant.

I never felt like I battled with infertility, but I did.

When I see mothers discuss their struggles and the options they go to to have a child, I don’t feel like I relate to that. But my husband and I were together 17 years before our son came along. For 12 of those, we hoped for a baby.

My diagnoses make it make sense, but despite our hope, we were never sure we were meant to be parents. So, we never sought help or answers. We just took no precautions and hoped. But all the while neither of us was sure if we should be parents.

That breaks my heart to know now, after five years of raising our son and knowing that we’re pretty decent at this, if not just in our ability to seek out learning how to improve, so often.

But my diagnoses weren’t what made us wonder if parenting was the right call. Not in the slightest. Though we did discuss that, and the possibility that we may never have more children.

No, what made us doubt our worth as parents was a lot of things. A lot of things many of you have considered, too. Could we afford to parent children? Could we afford to parent children while giving them the life we’d want to give them? Could we afford to parent children and still break cycles?

Not just monetarily afford, though that was a big one. But emotionally afford, mentally afford, or physically afford. We, both my guy and I, have quite the luggage set of past traumas.

And my eldest daughter didn’t live with me. I was the noncustodial parent. The noncustodial Mother.

What sorts of reasons must exist for that to happen? So many presume to know.

I’ll say that my firstborn wasn’t planned. I was 15 years old and nearly 20 weeks along when I found out. I had been on birth control and used protection with my one sexual partner, and I just had no idea. And then I did. And then I was a mother and a teenager, and a victim of domestic violence, and a lot of other things that I could not identify or deal with within the place I existed.

I didn’t have a capable circle around me. I was seen as grown now. My small safety net was distracted with other things and… And I thought we’d parent together – her father and me. You know?

But then we broke up, and possession is 9/10ths of the law. Or that’s what every single lawyer told me for the 18 months I tried to find one to help me get my baby home. The one that took the case never told me about a court date – the only court date. I never got a bill, the retainer of $2200 (nearly 6x rent) was enough I guess, for him to hand my baby over on paper without my consent (I never signed a thing).

And I, at age 19, took that to mean that the courts as well as my family, extended family, daughter’s family, schoolmates, workmates, neighbors, and friends all thought I was an unfit mother. No one helped, so that must have meant I was on the wrong side of the case.

But that’s not what I wanted to ramble about.

Kindergarten.

I never got to take my baby girl to her first day of school. I did have a few parent-teacher meetings, some recitals, and even a class party once. Never more than one thing with each teacher, though. I’d somehow always find out too late for a meeting or to schedule off for an afterschool event. I didn’t have a home computer, so let’s not assume I could have had that information on my own from 90 miles away.

(If you didn’t assume that my apologies. Suitcases of trauma.)

So when I think about what it’ll look like to take my baby boy to his first day of school, it’s like it’s the first time. Because it is.
But I’m 42.

And my daughter is 26.

I have grandchildren.

The struggle to even figure out HOW to register a child for school. My goodness.
The anxiety about if we’d have the right paperwork. If we’d somehow be found out.

“YOU AREN’T A REAL MOM!”

My son is 5 and I am his mother, but yet these fears tickle my skin as if someone has already announced it aloud.

Being a mother without a family structure, married to a man without a family structure…it makes some basic things seem so complicated. It makes everything scary. Maybe I’m just a scaredy cat.

The registration process was simple, though. And we’re all excited as much as nervous, and I’m just so hyper aware right now that our lives are changing.

It’s a transition.

We’ll never go back to the before-school times again. You know?

And I have never experienced that before. It was still just every other weekend and a couple weeks in summer…all year long, at every age, with my firstborn. Fewer days than I saw anyone else. Not enough to transition to anything. And isn’t that sad?
For the first time in my life, I’ll feel it. I’ll know what all those who have parented in my peripherals are talking about.

The nerves, the excitement, the opportunities, the dreams, the fears…The first day of school.

And I’ll know my child’s friends in a real way, his teachers, his classmates, everything.

Our Someday.

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Thank you so much for reading.

Are you a parent? Have you ever been a noncustodial parent? Do you have a large age gap? Are you an old parent like me? Chat me up in the comments.