For the record...

Last week I had two completely sleepless nights worrying about preschool. One side of my brain tells me this is totally ridiculous, to agonize over my three year old's scheduled playtime, I repeat, playtime. But the other side of my brain tells me this is a huge decision that requires an endless, frenzied if circular debate in my head. So there I sat, in bed, not sleeping, thinking about educational philosophies, Rudolf Steiner, Montessory, Reggio Emilia, for a deranged hour or two I became completely committed to home schooling (or is it Un-schooling?). In the darkness I wrote out pros and cons, added up pluses and minuses, formed bullet points and made lists of priorities. I felt completely at sea in a tempest of learning debate. I even found myself making midnight calls to family in the UK. Such was my sleepless insanity. Was my child being exposed to enough music, enough art? Was he getting enough exercise? Was he being allowed the right amount of freedom and yet being taught, too, to take instruction? Was it the right community for him, one both he and I felt comfortable in? All this, I was demanding from a few mornings of playtime.
I realise now, having passed the application deadlines (and with Max staying at the same school we had him in last year), that the preschool issue was just was one of the worries I could DO something about. I could be proactive, make changes. Some of my other anxieties these days just don't seem to have answers, like whether or not we'll ever move back to the UK, and where we want 'home' to be as the boys get older. (None of this demands violin accompaniment I know, and there's always joy in that post-worry relief, that was all it was - we still have our health and each other - but sometimes it's hard to see that at 3am.) And I think one other thing fed into my insomnia; a moment of loss as I flipped around in bed, too hot, too cold, and infuriated by some strange and unidentifiable ticking noise. I was sort of saying farewell to the three year old boy who has been living in our house, acknowledging that with another school year underway Max will turn four, get that torrent of testosterone and maybe lose all the sweet loving that takes me by surprise these days. The other week, I was changing him into swimming trunks at the pool when he said again that he loved me. My mind was full of what we'd have for lunch, whether I had the suncream, and the damn preschool debate and it was a slow thirty seconds before the words filtered through and I acknowledged what he'd said. I'll regret that delay when I haven't heard those words in weeks, months...