Big School!

It's finally happened! Vir has started big school. Embarked on a long journey and all that. His Shroopie masi thinks the journey should end at her doorstep - with a PhD in hand. I'm already in awe of the said masi so I'd love for that to come true. On the other hand, I often think of the romance involved in him becoming an out of work artist. Vijay wonders why my dream involves him being out of work. If he's an artist, so be it, but can we at least hope that he should have work? There has also been a time when Vijay and I have paranoid-ally worried that he might be into car racing given his passion for cars and we have visualized ourselves as a terrified old couple cowering in the stands while our son races past at a speed at which you don't want your children to race past. Sigh. All that is thankfully later. For now, I just hope that he loves his school and his little nursery class and his two teachers and that he gets off his bus everyday grinning and full of stories for me.

I was really worried about how he would take school especially since he's been at home with me for so many months. I spent the last month prepping him for this but didn't have too much hope that this would result in him happily trotting off into class while waving me a cheerful goodbye. That doesn't happen with him. What I expected was him starting with a low grade whining about not wanting to go to school and ending in loud wails while clinging to my thigh. That happened.

Luckily though, there's a happy ending. I didn't have to peel him off my thigh and leave him crying and kicking at his unfortunate teacher, thanks to Tara! I had taken her with me to drop Vir off to class and while he was not at all interested in any of the things set up in his class to invite and encourage kids, Tara was thrilled to see all the play dough and the toys and the colors and and immediately made herself comfortable in his class. When Vir wouldn't let me leave and Tara wouldn't agree to leave the class, one of his class teachers took pity on me as I was getting increasingly frazzled (God bless her) and offered to keep Tara in class for a while too so Vir had someone he loved in there. Vir loved the idea and of course Tara wasn't complaining. So they held hands and trotted off into the classroom, this time waving me cheerful goodbyes. Phew! I managed to extract Tara after a while and bit all my nails off over the next couple of hours as I went home and waited for the bus to drop him off after school. I'm happy to report that he jumped out grinning widely and had all sorts of things to tell me about his first day.

He's off to school now - it's his third day and I just can't wait for him to back. It's strange for me to not be part of what he's doing for so many hours in the day, and all I want to do is hear his stories!