Pie the Kindergartner
I am now a lady of leisure. My younger child has fled to kindergarten, and I now have hours and hours to watch Oprah, eat bon bons, and get pedicures. I so cannot wait.
If only.
I have to say sending my wee one off is a bittersweet experience, one I’m not completely excited about. By default of being the second child, she just seems younger to me than her brother did when he started kindergarten. But she’s taken to school well. She doesn’t like the transition of walking into the school–her teacher has to peel her off of me–but once she’s in she’s immediately happy and I know way more about kindergarten after one week of school than I did in the boy’s entire year there.
The boy, surprisingly, is loving second grade. His teacher seems great and he’s excited about the desk fairy (who occasionally surprises with a treat those with neat desks), D.E.A.R. (drop everything and read), and math.
And me? I am procrastinating on deciding what I want to do next by overcompensating. I have thrown myself into school with a vengeance and have taken on enough that I shouldn’t have to think about what I want to be when I grow up for a while. I’ve got the PTO mini-grant committee that I head. I’ve taken over the school newsletter. In the spring, there’s Teacher Appreciation week, for which I’m the co-chair. I’ll be in the library once a week and in Pie’s classroom another day of the week. Â And then there are the synagogue activities. I update the Web site every week. I write all the bereavement letters. I’m co-chair the women’s seder committee.
Doodles the Second Grader (holding a picture of Doodles the First Grader holding a picture of Doodles the Kindergartner)
And then there’s the novel. The novel. Dum dum dum! I just finished finally inputting all the changes from my last reader and I have sent it off to a new reader. But I’m pretty much there, so now I’m toiling over the query letter, which is agonizing, as in some ways it can be more important than the novel. (The query letter being the one page summary of the novel that I send to agents in hopes of representation.) The query letter is just no fun. And then there’s the researching of agents and the submitting. It’s all a very terrifying process (it’s important to research agents but in researching you just learn over and over how humiliating the whole process is) and it leaves me vulnerable to the opinions and whims of strangers, but strangers who can make a difference in my writing career. Now that I am a lady of leisure, I will have the opportunity to join a group of moms from the school who are part of a writing group, so I won’t be writing in a near-vaccuum (near, because I do have wonderful friends who read my stuff, but none of them close enough for me to have a chat with over coffee).
And of course I need to start working on the next thing. I’m very excited about a one day Flash Fiction Crank I’ll be attending at the Salem Literary Festival as a means to get me out of my novel rut and to start thinking in different ways.
So, lady of leisure, yes. But bon bons and Oprah and pedicures? Not so much. Although, lady cannot live by novel alone. Feel free to send the bon bons.
