Confession: Competition

My son went to daycare yesterday. So I have a confession to make: Every time he goes to daycare, I have a sudden urge to do a special project with him and buy him a new toy and take him to the coolest playground I can find. Because I’m secretly afraid he’ll like daycare better than home.

Yes, I know that’s ridiculous. No, knowing that it’s ridiculous doesn’t make a whit of difference. Sending my son to daycare brings out a competitiveness in me that is rarely brought out so strongly by anything else.

Why is that? Just think about it: At daycare, he has a huge roomful of toys he only plays with now and then. There are a whole bunch of other kids to play with. There is an indoor and an outdoor playground right there. They do some kind of project (like making jello or finger painting or baking something) every day. No-one yells at him or spanks him when he refuses to take a nap. At home, he has the same toys he always has. The only other kid is his baby sister who tries to pull his hair and eat his toys. There’s no indoor playground and the outdoor “playground” is sadly lacking a slide, Cozy Coupes, teeter totters, and a basketball hoop. Projects are sporadic and rarely include the use of jello or paint (and by “rarely” I mean “never”). And naptime is sometimes a two-hour ordeal involving raised voices and frequently a solid swat across a misbehaving tuchis.

I am a bad mother.

Except that I’m really not, and a certain part of me knows this. My son has an amazing vocabulary for a not-quite-2-1/2 year old, and I know it’s because I talk to him all day long and use big vocabulary words like “delicious,” “fascinating,” and “incorrigible.” (I’m kidding about that last one. That one, my husband taught him.) He has a great imagination and loves to play pretend and tell stories because I do it with him all the time and encourage him to use his mind that way. I teach him to be polite and say “please” and “thank you” and “I’m sorry” and “excuse me.” I teach him good manners like not taking other people’s toys and eating neatly and not interrupting a conversation. I’ve taught him shapes and numbers and colors and the alphabet. We sing songs together. We build railroad tracks together. We race cars together. We do puzzles together. I fix his books when he rips them and his toys when he breaks them.

And maybe the wonderful daycare teachers (and they are, truly, wonderful) do all that, too. But there are a few things that they don’t – or can’t – do that I can. They don’t give him a belly Zerbert when he’s in a bad mood. They don’t give him a big hug when he wakes up from his nap. They don’t snuggle him in their lap when he’s starting to get tired or cranky. They can’t fix a boo-boo with a kiss. And they don’t tell him, “I love you!!!!” That line is mine, all mine.

Yeah, I don't know why I'm worried. I totally win.

Isn't It Ironic

Two and a half years ago, my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. After two major surgeries, she was able to stay at home while she underwent chemotherapy. Ironically, I was newly pregnant with my first child - her first grandchild – and as I visited her each day, we commiserated over nausea and lack of appetite, and took our afternoon naps together. The cancer responded to the chemo very quickly, and by the time my son was born, Mom came to the hospital, not as a patient, but as a proud new grandma meeting her new grandson for the first time.

She was healthy for over a year, and during that time celebrated both my sister’s wedding and my son’s first birthday. But not long after that, she began experiencing all too-familiar symptoms. The cancer had returned.

Once again, she began chemotherapy. And once again, I was newly pregnant. But instead of laughing about our shared nausea in Mom’s living room, we were grimly ignoring it in her hospital room. She was much sicker this time, and it was quickly apparent that the cancer was not responding to the chemotherapy this time around. So it was no surprise when her doctor asked for the family to join Mom at her appointment a few weeks ago. And it was no surprise when the conversation began with the awful words, “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing more we can do.”

Even though we all knew in our hearts that we had reached that point, hearing the words said out loud was both devastating and yet, somehow, a relief. The giant elephant in the room had finally been acknowledged. We all agreed that inpatient hospice care would be best for Mom, and the plans were set in motion to transfer her to a beautiful residential hospice facility near her hometown.

When the decision had been made that Mom would move to hospice, my husband gently suggested that we sign up for his company’s drop-in daycare program, so that when the time came that we needed to spend long days with Mom, we would have that resource available. We agreed we’d do a “test run” this week and signed him up for today. In yet another ironic twist, Mom was transferred into the hospice facility yesterday evening, so today, the day my son went to daycare for the first time, was my first visit to her there.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how ironically parallel the situations were: handing over both my mother and my child into the care of others for the first time in my life; entrusting them to strangers who would care for them in the short term when I could not; feeling guilt that I wasn’t taking care of them myself 100% of the time yet knowing that was an unfair demand; feeling both grief and relief at releasing them into hands other than my own. I shed a few tears as I kissed my son goodbye on his way to daycare, and I shed a few more as I kissed Mom goodbye in her new home. I didn’t want either of them to need to be there, but I’m glad there is a safe place for them to be when they need it.