Mama Work Airplane

Mitike is smart -- a boast I feel I can make only because she's not biologically mine. When I carefully explain to her that Mama has to go back to work and that TK is going to start school, but not until AFTER Nana and Gerry come on the airplane to visit, she nods, a concentrated frown on her face.

"Mama work?"

"Yes, and TK's going to go to school."

"After Nana-Gerry airplane -- up in the air?"

"Exactly."

She nods, then pauses to take another bite of her bagel. "Mama work airplane?"

Okay, she is only two -- she can't understand everything. What she did begin to absorb this week, though, is that she and Mama have entered a new phase -- a phase in which Mama is suddenly dressed up in the mornings, with earrings and a necklace on -- a phase in which Mama is rushing out the door to her car when TK is still in her pajamas. She knows I go to a place called "work"; she knows I'm gone until after her nap. But because of the sweet presence of my mom and step-dad this week, TK doesn't yet know that her own days will be utterly changed from the slow, easy rhythm of the past four months -- that from 7:45-3:45 every Monday through Friday, she will now snack, play, eat, read, nap, and go to the potty with twenty other toddlers at the Juneau Puddle-Jumpers Day Care.

In an effort to stay positive, I call her daycare "TK's school". For a month, we've visited for an hour or two each day, and she's loved it. It's a bright, colorful, loving, safe daycare. My mom and step-dad confirmed that when they visited the place with her. But still I feel worried.

I watch as TK bounds happily through the daycare's door, packs her coat into her little cubby, and runs to join the 2-year-old group in the day's lesson. I stand back, nursing my sadness. I want our months of coffee shop dates, sledding runs, coloring at the kitchen table, splashing in puddles, yelling "Come on, Birdie!" to the seagulls at the harbor, cuddling at naptime, Bob Marley dance parties, cooking lessons, hide-and-go-seek games. I don't want to give her up. I want to melt onto the floor like she does when she's sad -- refuse to get up until someone tells me I don't have to go back to work, until someone says I can keep being a stay-at-home mom.

TK, on the other hand, runs back to me to ask, "Mama, come back?" and when I say of course I will, she waves at me and then turns back to building blocks with Ms. Charm and her small learning center group of 2-year-olds.

And anyway, though I wondered what TK was doing all day with my mom and Gerry this week, I never worried. As I circulated my classroom, bending to help students, my mind kept drifting to the way I knew Gerry was probably lifting TK high to touch the ceiling, the way my mom was probably cuddling her close, the way Gerry was probably allowing her to scribble on his hands with markers, the way Mom was probably letting her stick stickers all over her sweater. If only Nana and Gerry lived in Juneau.

I know TK will be entertained at daycare, that she will learn new things. My worry about daycare is more about influence. Two days ago, TK whined for the first time, "My toy!" to Tim -- a phrase she could only have learned in daycare. Yesterday, she said "Go away!" to Katie. I don't think she learned the way she said that phrase from my singsongy "Rain, rain go away. . ." The word "mine" has crept into her otherwise sweet vocabulary, and she's begun to grab for things again -- a habit I thought I'd convinced her to break.

This is my weight to carry about daycare for my beloved little girl: that she would learn more about becoming a good person if she had my one-on-one influence all day; that she would feel more secure being nurtured by her mother all day; that four months was not enough time. I know the social benefits of daycare, the reality that I HAVE to work for financial reasons, the gift long and open summers are to parents who are teachers like Ali and I are. But every utterance of "mine", every tantrum when she melts onto the floor in histrionic sadness will make me worry again.

My mom reminded me this week that TK is more than smart: she's also resilient, confident, strong-minded, and happy-spirited. The little girl who rides at the front of the long blue sled, gets a spray of cold snow in her face, and shouts, "Again!" will survive the challenges of daycare. The small person who looks confidently up at adults and invites them to sit -- "Bum!" -- and then promptly offers them imaginary tea and imaginary bowls of soup will emerge from the influence of the mine-sayers and the grabbers fairly unscathed. The silly child who points at the drawing of the moose in Harold and the Purple Crayon and shouts, "Porcupine!" will retain her personality in the midst of the crowd.

I know all these things. I know, too, that Nana and Gerry have their lives to live in Iowa, and that daycare is a necessary reality, whether I welcome it or not. Maybe it's ME I'm most worried about. When I came home Monday afternoon -- after the longest stretch TK and I had been away from each other since we met four and a half months ago in Ethiopia -- I swept her up into my arms and held her close, savoring the softness of her warm cheek, the sweet strength of her little arms around my neck.

"Were you okay when Mama went to work?" I murmured into her hair.

She patted my back in soothing circles with her little hand, just like I do to comfort her when she wakes from a nightmare in the night. Then she pulled back and looked at me with concern, her little brow furrowed. "Mama okay work?" she asked.

I suppose that's the real question.