In the land of mommy anxiety

Dear Robin,
Tonight, as usual, I asked Andrew how he’s doing at his new school. For the past five weeks, since Andrew’s first day as a “new kid” that’s been a loaded question—a sensitive issue. The kind of sensitive that brought tears for Andrew and long-winded explanations of the sociology of social interaction for me. Sometimes Andrew would get emotional on the way to school or sometimes on the way home. But mostly, it was before bed that I explained how it takes time to get to know people and it takes time to learn your locker combination and your class schedule and the people you want to sit with at lunch. Sometimes I ended up saying, “You know Andrew, experts say it takes 21 days to adjust to a new habit, so just give this the same time.”

I felt desperate on many nights to find the right words to comfort him until I finally realized that no words at all were best and I’d let him cry if he wanted to or I’d watch him toss up his mini basketball into the mini hoop until my head pounded from the jarring vibration of the hoop every time he hit the rim. Then there was the repetition of Kanye West’s Golddigger blaring from his iHome that didn’t help the heartbeat between my eyes or the dull ache in the back of my head.

I’d leave Andrew’s room only to stare at the ceiling all night in my own room.

Teaching the next day for me was difficult. I made mistakes on my syllabus and never seemed to copy the right amount of handouts. Or when I did, the collation process was funky and some students would get a handout without page 3 and they’d all look at me feeling disappointed that they signed up for the lunatic teacher who won’t stop mumbling about “not being herself lately.”

Here’s the thing: I DO UNDERSTAND that kids have to make their own path and they have to solve these school issues and social issues on their own. I support that idea and I’ve been letting that happen. But it hasn’t stopped me from worrying about Andrew and praying that TODAY will be the day that things turn around, that Andrew will tell me that he feels comfortable in his schedule, with his locker, with a friend—whatever it takes to get him back to being the kid I dropped off at that school five weeks ago.

And so that’s where I’ve been… in that land of mommy-anxiety where I was suspended in the world of “waiting for everything to be okay.”

Then tonight…

I asked Andrew how he feels about “everything” now that we’re in the middle of week five…

His response?

“I’m only friends with half of the sixth grade.”

At Andrew’s school that’s about 100 kids.

I look over at Andrew to see he’s got that deviant smile that I knew so well this summer—that look that tells me he’s okay now and that he’s making a joke to show me he’s okay now.

I smiled back and said, “Good.” I wanted to ask more but for tonight, I let it go at that.

In my own bed, I exhaled a deep yoga kind of breath and felt my own anxiety about middle school release.

Maybe I can get back to my regular life now, if there is such a thing.