Yesterday, about a half hour before the kindergarten bus came, Max started saying that he didn’t want to go to school. He was unusually whiney and whimpery in his pleas to stay home. I tried distracting him and cheering him up and being firm. When the bus finally pulled up to our house, he took heavy, begrudging steps up the stairs and to his seat.
He sat down and pressed his face against the window with a furrowed brow.
I gave him a smile and a wave.
He frowned.
I blew him a kiss.
He scrunched his nose and hit the glass with a fist, glaring at me with amazing intensity.
My heart broke into five thousand tiny pieces and fell underneath the heavy wheels of the bus as it drove away.
Even though I considered it—seriously considered it—I did not drive to the school and check on him or bring him home.
And I realized that it’s often the moments that make you feel like a horrible mother that actually constitute being a good one.
He came home at the end of the day as happy as a clam, of course.
If he pulls the same crap today, I’m going to tell him that the monster that he swore was in his closet the other night is actually real and feasts on the flesh of kindergarten drop-outs.
I think that will work.
