First Day

First Day

“This is fun! Isn’t this fun?”

Sandy looked at her mother, pretending to have fun so that she would keep going. She smiled, so her mother would think she was falling for it.

As she sat there, holding her smile, she wondered how mothers did it. How did they learn how to do all this? Ever since she became aware of her mother being her mother, Mom had seemed to know what to do in almost every situation. It was amazing. But recently her mother seemed to have changed.

Sometimes everything was still fine, but other times her mother tried to trick her into doing things that were not fine. This was one of those things.

Today her mother was taking her to something called preschool. Sandy didn’t know what it was except that she had to wear different clothes and new shoes to go, and her mother was nervous. The more Mom told her how wonderful it was going to be, the more Sandy felt like it was a trick.

Finally, they got to a building. Outside the building was a playground, like at the park. That was nice! But, that’s not where Mum took her. Mum took her into the building.

She looked again at her mother smiling the “This is fun” smile, but she was having trouble now holding her own.

Then she saw a small head peek around the corner with two bright eyes and a big smile. Then a whole girl popped out. “Hi!” she said, “I’m Susan! Wanna play?”

Sandy looked up at her mother who looked down still smiling, and said, “Go ahead, I’ll be right here.”

It was one of her best days ever. A day Sandy still remembered fondly, years later. The first day she took her own daughter to preschool.