Change In Plans

Greetings from New York!

Zola and Tallulah both started school last week.  Zola is in fourth grade at P.S. 3, the John Melser Charrette school in the West Village.  Tallulah is in “4s” at the Blue Man School on Houston and Avenue B.

For Zola, it was a shock being dropped into a big public school after three years of small-class coddling at the Willow School out in New Jersey and 15 months of no school at all.  India had to work pretty hard to get him accepted to P.S. 3.  In the late summer, she started trekking over to the school every day, usually taking Zola and Tallulah, to plead her case to the administrators.

I had not seen the school, but had heard Zola’s wide-eyed commentary from his summer visits: “It is a huge place.”  ”It has cages over the windows, “There is no grass or sand in the playground.” “It smells like barf.”  The last comment was probably just from the fresh paint.

Through India’s sheer relentlessness, Zola was finally accepted into Beth B.’s fourth-grade class. We all went to school together on his first day.  Zola walked slowly, and with his eyes wide, like man condemned.  The closer we got to the school building, the more slowly he walked.

All of Zola’s late-summer impressions were overwhelmed by the sheer number of kids that poured into the gymnasium to wait with us before school opened on the first day.  Hundreds and hundreds of kids: tall, short, black, white, Asian, Latino, long-haired, funny-haired, short-haired, bespectacled, loud, quiet.  On the morning of the first day, packed into the gymnasium, they were mostly loud.  He clung to me physically as we climbed four flights of stairs to his classroom.

There is definitely a lot more diversity at P.S. 3 than we had at Willow.  I feel woefully uncool surrounded by tattooed parents, talking about film production and lesbian activism. I became aware (again) of how the last year has been a bubble.  Our kids have had no fixed schedules, no real demands put on them, and loads of 1:1 adult attention.  Public school is not exactly like that.

After the first day, Zola said, “Do you want to hear about the worst school in the whole world?  Well, you came to the right place, Dad!”  From that point, it seems to have gotten better with each passing day.  

Zola is making friends, getting used to being out the door by 8:05 every morning, and doing homework.  He was disappointed that “no one seems very interested in my trip around the world,” but that is OK.  If nothing else, he (and we) appreciate how special our time together has been.  He us enrolled in after-school activities ranging from ping-pong (with the world’s former #11-ranked player) to fencing to “stunts and skills.”  He nurtures a dream of becoming a break dancer.

The school is about a 10-minute walk from our rented house.  I am enjoying the morning walk with Zola each day.  We have had a few tough mornings, when we couldn’t get him out of the house, and we were worried about being late.  Mostly, though, we have nice conversations about video games, movies, and the weapons and planes used in World War II.  At least it is not Pokemon.

Our long re-entry to the U.S. after our trip feels somewhat less ragged now.