Today I got the call I have been waiting for; waiting with both excitement and dread. It was the school admissions director. As she introduced herself, I was once again a teenager, speaking to the admissions director at Smith College as she congratulated me on my acceptance.

However, this was preschool, not college, and my son had not gotten in. Despite the fact that I had dutifully listed him on the waiting list a few months after his birth along with all of the other Marin mothers, it appeared that some moms had gotten on the list while still pregnant. As ridiculous as it seems, I could not help but feel that I had failed somehow.

When I first told my own mother that I was looking at preschools, she sensibly asked, “Why don’t you just send him to the one near your house, like I did with you?” Oh, if only it were that easy.

It is hard now to think about how much time and energy I spent picking out just the right place for my son, as though I really were choosing a four-year “home away from home” instead of a place he would spend just a few days per week.

Would he be happy and safe? Would he enjoy the reading nook and the art corner? I finally discovered the perfect place, just two blocks from my house. My neighborhood preschool.

The rejection felt like a wound.

I chose this small city to raise my family because it reminded me of the friendly little town in upstate New York where I grew up. However, sometimes it seems to be just a picturesque facade of that little town and its simple way of life.

Here, I must rush to the phone with positive pregnancy test in hand and pay a $50 application fee (same as college) and beg preschools to let my sweet-tempered little boy play in their mock kitchens and join their circle time. Leaving your child for the first time is hard enough without suffering such indignities.

However, I am certain that my son will have many advantages and opportunities here as well. . . if he can ever get off the waiting lists.

By Rebecca Jackson

Labels: Rebecca Jackson

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