The Grief of 1,000 Tiny Things
By Ashlee Gadd
@ashleegadd
Unlike her brothers’ first day of school (which we celebrated with Sharpie tattoos, frozen yogurt, and, generally speaking, a great deal of hoopla), my daughter’s first day of preschool comes and goes with little fanfare.
We started hyping school up months ago, talking excitedly about the toys, the playground, the friends, the teacher. At first, she seemed ecstatic. Can I go to skoo now? Can I haf a backpack?
Last week, though, one evening in the rocking chair, I made the mistake of saying, “I’m going to miss you when you’re at preschool”—which I now realize is a terrible thing to say to a two-year-old who has barely left the house (or the presence of her mother) since a pandemic arrested the world.
“But I don’t want to go to skooooo!!” she wailed, “I want to stay wif you!!!”
One second she was smiling, the next she was sobbing, real tears pouring out of her eyes, dripping off her chin. She reached her pudgy arms around my neck, holding on for dear life, and all the guilt I had suppressed over the choice to send her to preschool at all (she’s only two! I didn’t send her brothers till they were three!) came bubbling up into my chest.
What am I doing?
Is she too young for this?
Have I made a horrible mistake?
Can I get the deposit back?
I held her close, kissed her over and over, reassured her she’ll still be with me all the time. It’s only a few hours, a few days a week. All she heard was, “Mommy will miss you.”
I wiped a tear off her cheek, wishing I could swallow the words back up.
***
I am pulling pumpkin spice waffles out of the toaster when she appears in the doorway of the kitchen, hair askew, wearing the new elephant pajamas I purchased for her last week. She brushes a clump of tangled hair out of her face, revealing a pacifier half-hanging out of her mouth.
“Good morning, Pres!” I practically sing, “It’s the first day of school! Are you so excited?!”
She offers a casual mmmhmm, followed by a request for ketchup. It takes me a second to realize she means syrup.
The rest of the morning is rushed and chaotic, all of us running around preparing to walk out the door at 7:45am (which, after months of not needing to be anywhere before 9, may as well be dawn). On the way to the car, I place her in front of the garage for a quick photo. There is no time for Sharpie tattoos.
We make the five-minute drive to the preschool campus we have not yet seen in person. A few months ago, when I first inquired about the school, the director informed me they weren’t doing tours during Covid.
If you’d like, I can schedule a tour over Zoom?
I told her that would be great, but then, as life goes, I got busy and never followed up. Trusting the rave reviews from fellow parents in our neighborhood, I enrolled my daughter in a school I’d never seen. The strangeness of this fact suddenly haunts me as we pull into a vacant parking lot, enter a building we’ve never stepped foot in, and greet a teacher we’ve never met.
Much to my relief, the inside of the building matches the pictures on the website.
The preschool director welcomes us in, smiling behind her mask. She says hello to Presley and then kindly asks us to sanitize our hands. The room smells like disinfectant, a scent I am oddly grateful for. We stand there rubbing our hands as she explains the protocol—only one family can drop off or pick up at a time, here’s the code for the door, here’s the sign-in clipboard.
I remind her we’ve never seen the school before and she offers us a 30-second tour. Here’s the snack table, the cubbies, the tiny toilet. Presley makes a beeline for the baby dolls, yelling her signature “Waaaah waaaaah” on their behalf, a cross between a fake cry and the sound of a cat giving birth.
After one lap around the room, we can see another family waiting outside the door. We have to leave so they can come in. The realization hits me fresh: I am actually leaving my daughter here, for the next four hours, at this preschool I’ve seen for thirty seconds.
Dear reader, please know: I am not a helicopter mom. You know those videos of moms giddily skipping through Target on the first day of school? That is usually me. Do you know how many times I have wished, hoped, and desperately prayed for my kids to be back in school over the past 18 months?
And yet. I leave the preschool remembering that night in the rocking chair, the way my daughter had choked back sobs. It’s as if we’ve traded places, Freaky Friday style. I have to bite my lip from screaming at her, but I want to stay wif you!
She is fine, happy even, delightfully distracted with new-to-her toys. I hug her, kiss her, tell her we’ll see her soon. I wave goodbye through the window. She doesn’t even look.
And just like that, all three of my kids are finally in school at the same time. I have three glorious hours to myself—arguably, all I’ve wanted for the past year and a half. I should be a walking meme right now, twirling through the aisles of Target with an iced coffee in hand, perusing the clearance candles and admiring fake plants I do not intend to buy.
Instead, I go home. I walk into my empty, quiet house. I take a seat at the kitchen table and burst into tears.
***
I thought everything would be better by now.
In some ways, they are, I suppose. My big kids are back at school, a gift I do not take for granted. But even there, parents are not allowed in the classrooms. On meet and greet day, we stand outside, masked, awkwardly straining our necks to get a peek inside. We do not shake the teacher’s hand, careful to keep our distance, doing our best to smile with our eyes. My children describe the rooms for us later, raving about wobbly chairs and the number of Captain Underpants books lining the shelves.
Back to school night is held over Zoom, again. The teacher freezes every seven minutes in between apologies. Sorry, no field trips. Sorry, no parent volunteers. Please remind the kids to pull their masks over their noses.
At my daughter’s very first dance class, I sit in my car in the parking lot, alone, squinting at my phone—watching her sashay across a wooden floor via Zoom.
You’d think I’d be used to all of this.
But here I am, on the first day of school, suddenly weeping at the kitchen table over all of it, the grief of 1,000 tiny things.
When the dam breaks, I don’t fight it. I cry on and off all morning as I channel nervous energy into tasks around the home. I strip the beds, put the sheets in the wash. I tidy toys, put away clothes, wipe toothpaste off the bathroom counters. Print a recipe for jambalaya, line up ingredients on the counter to make banana bread.
I wander around the house restless, trying to make myself useful.
I scroll Facebook on my phone, stopping to watch in entirety “harrowing footage” of people in Afghanistan clinging to an airplane. A lump of guilt forms in my throat, my mind and body acutely aware of the small inconveniences I am crying over. I put my phone down and pray for the people there, for the women in particular, for the mothers.
I drive to Trader Joes through smoky air. I wonder how contained the fires are, if anyone else has been evacuated today. My mind drifts to my daughter. Is she making friends? Did she eat enough breakfast?
I wander through the store gathering ingredients for jambalaya, my mind racing like a news ticker, rotating concern between natural disasters, global catastrophes, my own children. At the checkout, right on cue, a friendly cashier asks, “So, how’s your day going?”
A loaded question.
I do not tell her I sobbed in my kitchen this morning. I do not tell her I miss my daughter, or that I have no idea what my children are doing right now, a fact that unsettles me. I do not tell her how heavy my heart feels watching the news—Afghanistan, the earthquake in Haiti, the fires raging up and down our state. I do not tell her my plans for jambalaya, that I feel helpless and anxious and am simply trying to keep myself busy until 12 p.m.
I smile and tell her my day is going okay.
After loading the grocery bags into my trunk, I walk my cart all the way back to the row of carts near the entrance of the store, something (regrettably) I haven’t always done. I suppose this is one way COVID has profoundly changed me: I now wake up every morning with a keen recognition of the least I can do. Love your neighbor. Wear a mask. Return the shopping cart.
Back home, I cut and dice, dice and cut—onions, bell peppers, celery, sausage. Into the Crock-Pot they go, along with my anxiety. I stir and stir.
Next I move to the banana bread, mashing brown bananas in a mixing bowl. Sugar, vanilla, eggs, flour. I put a $3.99 bouquet of flowers into water and do three more laps around the house, picking up socks and stray lego pieces. I wonder if Carson is making friends.
I start more laundry. Open the mail. Google a nonprofit that helps Afghan refugees resettle in Sacramento. I bookmark their volunteer opportunities and their online wishlist, making a note to email the director later, to find out how I can support the mothers.
As I tidy up my desk, my eyes fall on a postcard taped to the wall: What does love require today?
A loaded question.
I stare at the words, suddenly remembering I usually write my children a letter on the first day of school. But how could I possibly describe this day? This season? This year? How could I possibly describe how much we carried? The relentless exhaustion. The horrific, never-ending cycle of hard-to-watch news. How could I possibly describe the overwhelming awareness of our privilege? Served with a side of both guilt and gratitude? I don’t know how to explain how fragile everything feels, like the whole world is a carton of eggs being casually tossed around between toddlers.
What does love require today?
I have no idea. I am hanging on by a thread.
Maybe that’s what I’ll tell them. Maybe I will tell them on the first day of school, I cried at the kitchen table, grieving 1,000 tiny things. Maybe I’ll tell them I made jambalaya. And that I put flowers in a jar while I prayed. Maybe I’ll tell them I smiled at the cashier behind my mask, and I carefully returned the shopping cart.
That I made a dent in the mountain of grief through a few tiny acts of hope.
Words and photo by Ashlee Gadd.