Kindergarten And Separation: A Father’s Account Of A Difficult Week

Lorenzo — my eldest, aged four and a half — started kindergarten in September. After three years going to school in which he only spoke English, he entered a bilingual school, where both Greek and English are spoken. For a while, he had been saying that he wanted to learn Greek.

The first day was sheer enthusiasm. The second day, enthusiasm had started to wane. From the third day on, school was a sentence, and there was no way to get him excited about going. But the school year had just started: what were we supposed to do now?

I tried to understand Lorenzo, to see if I could help somehow. We had had more than a month of holidays, of friends visiting, camping trips to the beach, and, basically, spending 24 hours a day together. Now, we were having to be separated for a large part of the day.

Every morning Lorenzo sobbed at the school entrance: every goodbye was a heartbreak. Every day he asked the same question: Why do I have to go? I don’t want to go.

The importance of education 

I listened, and I asked myself: Why does he have to go? Going to school being good for his development aside, my partner Irene and I need that essential time to do things we simply cannot do while he is here (essentially, work).

But these adult motives do not make sense for a child who lives in a state of fun, and who is always living in the present moment. I think of the system we live in, in which we don’t raise children in villages or communities anymore (even less so when — like in our case — we live away from our families).

I explained to Lorenzo that he would learn new things at the kindergarten (like Greek, which he was so keen to learn!), that he would make friends like he did in his former kindergarten, that he could play with new toys, ones which we didn’t have at home. Nothing seemed to land: “I want to stay at home with you or mamá”.

Childhood hurts, always.

That’s when I realized that there was “something” — for want of a better word to explain the sensation — connected to the preciousness of childhood which I feared I would be breaking. By insisting Lorenzo goes to kindergarten, I don’t want to be the one who breaks this “something”.

What am I talking about? There is in Lorenzo, indeed in anyone his young age, a bright-eyedness about the world, a series of characteristics and behaviors which are as fragile as glass, which won’t last long.

How long will it be for example that Lorenzo is bullied for whatever reason, forcing him to abandon his tenderness in a survival attempt, to appear “hard” or “tough”? How often will we, as his parents, be able to intervene, seeing as it feels we ourselves toughened up to be able to make it like other adults do?

More hugs

Since he started going to school, Lorenzo often tells Irene and me a form of the following: “I love you” / “you’re my whole heart” / “you’re my love”, repeatedly in Spanish and Italian. He asks for many more hugs than he ever did, including in the middle of the night. One early morning he asked: “Papá, will you give me the biggest, bestest, most enormous hug in the world?”... before promptly falling back asleep.

I shared my anxiety with a friend, who is a grandmother. She said: “This marveling at the world, which you say is made of glass, broke in my grandchildren. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s partly because they also close up. Life does this to everyone. Childhood hurts, always.”

“Growing up means that they (and we all) close up, right?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes I can’t even look at the photos of my grandkids when they were younger. You see something in their eyes which is hard to name, and which isn’t there anymore.”

“Is it something like innocence?”

“Yes, put simply. I think it’s a time in which they’re taken in by this marveling for the world. It’s a sort of original paradise.”

Mental load 

On the fourth day of Lorenzo starting kindergarten, Irene traveled for work. She was gone for ten days with León, Lorenzo’s younger brother who was ten months at the time.

During those days, in the effort of managing domestic chores and raising a child by myself, I had to stop myself from writing to Irene on more than one occasion.

For example, the school needed Lorenzo’s vaccination records. It took me two days to find the booklet — even though it’s sat on the same dusty shelf since we moved to the house over three years ago.

Why would I write to Irene? Impulsively, I did ask at least two questions which I could have spared her, if I had tried a little harder:

• When’s the electricity the cheapest? We’ve lived in this house for three years and I could have asked the landlord or surfed the internet — which I eventually did, but only after I had sent Irene this message first.
• Do we only have one waterproof bedsheet? With that question, I give away the identity of the person who’s been the only one buying our sheets and changing them regularly…

I thought again about the mental load and how work is divided in a household, and how sometimes men struggle with that. A few days ago, Irene shared this Instagram post with me: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cw0YAnVA66e/

Is this for my benefit or the newsletter’s? “Ah, could be for both…😉” she smiled.

Two days later, on a Monday night, I was in Athens, where I interviewed Rubén Magnano, the former Argentine basketball coach who made history with:

• the silver medal in the World Basketball Championships in Indianapolis in 2002, beating the U.S. and its NBA — the best league in the world
• the only basketball gold medal for Argentina at the 2004 Olympics

The interview was about Argentina’s Golden Generation, Manu Ginóbili (probably Argentina’s best basketball player ever) and basketball in general. Once I’d turned the audio recorder off, we got to talking about fatherhood and how Magnano and his family decided where they were going to live.

I was so relaxed leaving Magnano after our interview, in a hotel in central Athens. It was past 11pm… and it dawned on me that the parking garage where I left the car had already been closed for over an hour (and yes, the attendant had told me, rather emphatically in Greek, that the garage closed at 10pm).

The 7th day 

Since the deed was already done, I didn’t break into a sweat. I looked down at my phone, to a message from Irene, who was in Sweden. I called her, we laughed, and I took a taxi home, 30 kilometers away. It was an unexpected expense — but what else could I do at that point?

On the seventh day of that heart-wrenching week, I took Lorenzo to kindergarten by taxi, since my car was still in the garage in Athens.

I tried to quickly leave him at the gate, as if to shorten the (mutual) suffering.

He screamed and cried. He ran to give me one last hug. It was hard to hear that pain from behind the now closed gate, as I went on my long journey of taking a bus and then the metro to retrieve my car from Athens.

With that problem solved, I tried to pick Lorenzo up earlier than usual. But he was the last out of the door. Yes, I got there last. But on this seventh day “something” (I still don’t know what it is) had changed. Lorenzo was in a good mood, happy, smiling, joking: “I knew you were going to come last,” he told me, “but don’t worry. I didn’t cry all day!”

The most important thing is to carry on, enjoying the moment, for as many days as possible.

I can only speculate whether one or any other of my strategies from the previous days had worked — whether they were my own ideas, or those from elsewhere. I painted a little heart for him on each hand; I gave him photos of the family to take with him in his rucksack; I hadn’t stretched out any goodbyes; he took two shells he found on the beach with him.

I still don’t know why Lorenzo was so sad in those first few days back at school. Perhaps we underestimated how overwhelming the new was (new school, new schoolmates, new teachers), and the need to adapt, just as his mother was away on a trip. But there’s definitely something more: after the latest Christmas break, he also struggled to go back, and now he is fully adapted to his environment.

I don’t know why Lorenzo had been so happy that day, but I was of course so happy for him. We spent the afternoon of the seventh day in a park; we built a cave with twigs; and when a little cat came along, we played together. Lorenzo started to cuddle the cat gently, and asked if we could bring him home (quite forgetting the four stray cats who we feed daily!)

Training school 

We went to football, for the third time together. After months of asking, we gave in and are sending Lorenzo to a training school. Lorenzo stepped into a locker room for the first time, though it was empty — the children usually come dressed. I was surprised at the ease with which Lorenzo made his way around this place, as if he knew about the beautiful and unique ceremony that went into making a locker room what it is: the place before it all kicks off.

I won’t go on about the rest of our day to not wear you out, but it was one of the happiest, loveliest days that I can remember of us together. At home, at dinner, Lorenzo came out with one if his sudden thoughts, apropos of nothing:

• Nacho.
• Yes?
• Will you die before me? I want us to die on the same day: you, me, mamá and León.

I suppose that the invisible thread — which is difficult to integrate — is that all of the mishaps of daily life don’t need to be any more than they are — mishaps. They’re challenges for us to keep learning and following, but no more than that. The most important thing is to carry on, enjoying the moment, everyone together, for as many days as possible. There are so many kittens waiting for a cuddle.