The twins start preschool in a few weeks. They will be going two mornings a week, three hours a session, and it’s really been the major motivation for a number of things in our lives of late, in particular the drive toward potty training independent-minded-twins, which has been a subject here on several occasions. Update on that of course, is that they are doing really well. Accidents are becoming more and more rare. (Knocking the wood on Grandpa’s desk…)
I’ve been telling anyone who would listen of late how excited we all are that school is starting. The twins need it. The little bear needs it. I need it. We’ve spent a lot of time together in the eight months we’ve been here, and as good as it’s been, it’s been a lot of time together. I think they are ready to interact with a different group of adults and make some friends on their own.
The good news is that we already know a lot of the kids in our class, and their parents from our swim lessons. There’s been this nice crew of families that we’ve connected with through the pool, library time, and a few other activities that we all happen to participate in. I’ve been very direct about the fact that I’m excited for them to go, in part because it will give me the time to not only focus on the little bear, but to maybe clean the house without three “helpers” playing jump-rope with the vacuum cord and playing football with the “Murphy’s Oil Soap.” I’m excited also because, I liked school, and to see them as students, even at that level is something I take great pride in. As I’ve discussed in this space, until the move, I spent the years from age 5 to 34 participating in some form of a school environment. With varied results to be certain.
We took them shopping to one of the few WalMart’s on Oahu for some school clothes: Boyo wanted a “Thomas the Tank Engine” shirt. Actually, what he really wanted was a shirt of Thomas’s friend “Peter Sam,” who’s a minor character, but pretty cool nevertheless. His sister, of course, is, as she has said, “all about the Princesses. Disney Princesses.” Yeah, that’s a direct quote. She was able to find a nice “Princess Ariel” shirt, and some lovely Princess sandals, and a loverly pair of Princess sunglasses, and she was quite content.
That said, we were unable to find a Thomas shirt, much less one of poor Peter Sam. Lots of “Cars” shirts, so we felt we could fall back on that if need be.
I should preface this with the fact that the twins are really excited about going to preschool. We’ve been pumping it up with them for over a month now, and they’ve bought into the fact they are “big kids who go to pre-school!” It’s turned into a mantra here. I’m not sure I’ve ever been more of a “Rah-rah” personality in hyping them up. I mention this only to illustrate that a partial motivator in the “rah-rah” campaign has been this shopping trip we took yesterday, and to walk out of there Thomas-less would have had potentially disastrous consequences, as the Boyo has decided of late, on occasion, to truly and scientifically test the boundaries of his vocal range both octave-wise and within his volume dynamics. I was a high Soprano in my days as a Boy-Chorister, and he’s got the range of his Dad… It’s been a touch harsh at times.
So, where there had been two full racks of Thomas apparel not eight days earlier, there were to be found a grand total of zero items to be had in this particular establishment. Zip. Nothing. There was much consternation.
But, we regrouped…perhaps in the bigger kid section…we could always try and shrink it….and, nope.
Hats? Socks? Underwear? Muumuu’s? Nope. Zilch.
We were beginning to plan what would have gone down in history as the great “Cars shirt acceptance bought with an unplanned toy purchase for leverage.” Then, in a flash of brilliance, the wife remembered shoes.
Gotta be some Thomas shoes right? So off we went.
Now, if you’ve ever been in a WalMart, you might know that their shoe shelves are extensive, and you’d need your own personal monk to help you navigate the aisles and miles of shelving. So, while we were at first daunted we pressed on. And we looked.
One thing about shopping in Hawaii is that, there are regular shopping trips where you will go to a Walmart, or even a grocery store, and find huge chunks of the aisles completely empty. Devoid of even a bottle of “Corn Nog.” While there were areas of the store low, they seemed pretty much stocked on what they had available. So we held out hope, and we looked. And looked.
We were about to settle on a pair of “Lightning McQueen” shoes, and were half-way through the hard sell on the Boyo, when his sister cried out, in a loud and clear voice, “Look! Thomas shoes!”
And I followed her outstretched arm as she pointed towards a slim stack of boxes, in the deepest corner of the aisle we were on that shone clear like a light in a tower on a clear night, in the midst of all the “Spider-Man,” “Hulk” and “Diego” shoes, my first-born saved the day. We would have walked by them, as amidst the plethora of characters, we weren’t even looking where she had looked.
And, as was once said in a great movie, “There was much rejoicing.” Not only were they Thomas shoes, they were his size, and they lit up when he walked. And jumped. And ran. All of which he tried out as he put them on and has nary taken them off since.
He was so appreciative to his twin sister for seeing them, as were the wife and I. He said thank you a bunch of times. I said thank you. I think even the store employee that was near us said thanks too, but there was something about the way that the twins talked to each other in that moment that really hit me.
They are going to school. It’s genuinely their first step into a larger world outside our home. Yeah, we’ve done drop-offs with swim lessons and Gymboree in the past, but this is the first step that they will be taking away from our home since I’ve taken over as “stay-at-home-Dad” as opposed to “work-six-days-a-week-twelve-hours-a-day-and-hope-they-are-awake when I get home-Dad.” I’ll admit it, here, in this space, only for you gentle reader, that I got a little choked up about it: the combination of the twins so thoroughly looking out for each other in that moment and so tremendously connecting with one another, coupled with thinking of them taking that next step out into the world, yeah, I was forced by my genetic disposition to take a few deep breaths and pretend I had something in my eye.
I know how fast it goes. Before I left it, I’d seen tons of kids grow up in front of my eyes working in education. But it’s a whole different beast when it’s your own kids. Especially two at once.
All at once I got a vision of both of them graduating from this and moving onto that, and it’s enough to make you feel like your eyes are open for the first time, and you don’t want to blink for fear that you’re not quite clever enough to hang onto that moment of clarity. And it was a heady rush; tough to blink away, especially when you factor in all the other gunk that one might be carrying about familial relationships and the like. Being family and being friends are different things. The moment that the twins shared there in that store rang true for me as a pair that were both twins and friends, and when they woke up this morning, the Boyo was still thanking his sister for it…and that was pretty freakin’ cool too. She, for her part was quite magnanimous.
Looking back, and yeah, it was only yesterday, it’s kinda cool to have moments where we surprise ourselves. A year ago, on most of my July days I’d have been sitting in my office either interviewing teachers and coaches, or talking to vendors about getting a good price on football jerseys or mouth-guards.
Here, in Hawaii; a place that I never planned to live; in a place that I have admittedly have had more than one moment since we moved here where I wanted to get the hell back to Jersey; perhaps here and now I’m starting to get to heart of what really matters:
Those uniforms I bought as AD might still be really a source of contention to someone today.
But you know what? That person’s not me. What’s surprising is that I’m not only not who I was when we left, I’m not who I expected to be upon arriving here.
And that doesn’t suck… Who wants to know everything anyway? Hell, I’m happy enough right now to now know much of anything about anything, except I took my kids to the Zoo today. And the Komodo Dragon was really active, the Hippos were tremendous as always, and the Chimpanzees were all excited to see this little boy who’s Thomas shoes lit up when he hopped up on the step to look at them even closer today. The Alpha Chimpanzee came over to see the shoes, and then sat on the window right where we were standing, and just kinda hung out. And then the rest came over and hung out nearby too.
Not bad at all for a pair of Walmart shoes that we almost missed I, guess.
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