Loneliness and friends and 1st grade

Gracie has been sort of a whiny pain about her birthday party lately. It’s going to be joint with another classmate and she can’t stop complaining about that. She doesn’t want to share, she doesn’t want to share, she doesn’t want to share. Well, shocker.

I’ve gotten pretty short about the whole topic as ingratitude is one of my least favorite things. Tonight she came out of her room in tears at about 745 and I was not remotely patient. She told me she was having nightmares from a movie she saw recently and I sighed heavily and marched her back to her bed, delivering a none-too-heartfelt Sweet Dreams headrub and extra hug.

I was reading Google Reader in my room a few minutes later when I heard her door creak open. She tiptoed out, obviously waiting for me to hear her. I decided to wait her out a sec and listened in silence. She hesitated and then went into the bathroom, apparently killing time. Finally I said, “Grace?” That was all the opening she needed, I guess, as she walked into my room with tears streaming down her face.

I pulled her up onto the bed with me and lay next to her. Resigned mothering, I think you could call it. I cast a longing look at my book and asked her what was going on. She started telling me again about how she did not want to share her birthday party; I think she could tell from my body language that I was closing up again because she dissolved into more vigorous tears. I battled my own impatience and asked her gently what was really going on. Finally, eyes closed, she choked through her tears, “Mummy, I’m scared nobody is going to want to play with me. They are all going to want to play with Caroline.”

I felt a wave of empathy and identification almost knock me over, with sharp rocks of guilt cutting into my ankles. She went on to tell me about how all of the girls in her class have a best friend and she doesn’t and she feels like she does not fit in. She described the playground dynamics and how she often gets left out since what she likes to do best is swing by herself. Oh! Swinging by herself – one of my very very favorite things to do (Still, to this day, I can be found swinging on playground swings. A lot).

I don’t have an answer for her. The vague sense of alienation that has defined much of my life swelled up in my own heart, my sense of myself overlapping with my sense of her into one big intertwined mess of sensitivity and differentness and heart and an aching desire to belong.

I wrapped Grace in my arms, looking down at the side of her face, noticing that the chestnut colored hair by her temple was soaked with tears. I kissed her forehead and just rocked her, shhhing quietly into her hairline. I told her that I felt alone a lot, and lonesome a lot, and that that did not mean that she would not find friends. I told her about all of the people who love her, citing a couple of dear friends outside of school.

I remembered a few mornings ago when I dropped both kids off at school. Whit dashed into the early morning activity room, leaving both Grace and I in the dust. I had to go and so I asked Grace where she wanted to wait until 8:10. She said she did not want to go into the activity room, and I felt an unsettling awareness that she sort of wished she could just dissolve into the wall until she had her clearly-defined seat in her classroom to take.

I steered her to a chair over by the double doors to the playground. “Sit here,” I said, sitting her down and kissing her on the cheek. “What should I do, Mummy?” she asked me plaintively. I told her to read her library book, and she refuted that with “But I already read it.” Fine. I told her to count. “What?” she asked, puzzled. “Count. I count everything, Grace, all the time. Count windows. Count people. Count backpacks.” She didn’t even challenge me, but smiled happily and said, “Okay.”

Tonight as I listened to her slowly ebbing sobs I remembered that morning’s keen awareness of Grace’s discomfort. When I tucked her into bed a few minutes later, I kissed her and held her face in my hands. Her eyes were incandescent in the dark, still wet with tears, red-rimmed. She stared right at me, her desire for me to make it all okay disconcertingly clear. If only I could, Gracie. I hugged her and told her I would always love her, no matter what, that she would always be my very favorite daughter in the whole wide world. She nodded wordlessly at me.

I’ve been wondering all night if telling her that her uncertainties are familiar to me was the right thing. I don’t know if that reassured her or scared her. I don’t know if I ought to have been more glib, telling her of course she will make friends and everybody loves her. Even if that is so, I’m not sure I could. My own wariness about people and my own hesitation about whether or not people like me is such an omnipresent part of who I am that I can’t fake otherwise.

Tonight was just another reminder of how my own worst qualities are animate in my child. Another glimpse at the load she carries because I am her mother. Oh, my poor insecure tearful girl. I love you, Gracie. I’m sorry that your inheritance from me is so complex, that it includes such swampy marshes of the soul.