Just your friendly advice giver here to serve.

On Mondays and Wednesdays Turner goes to the YWCA for after-school care. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays Turner gets to play on the playground with the other kids who have flexible-schedule parents. I've not been able to penetrate the mom's group that takes comfort under a shade tree each day. Andy says he really hasn't tried to penetrate the group. I imagine him on Fridays standing off to the side taking every body, gesture, and conversation in as is his usual custom. I, on the other hand, want to be liked by the women I have grown to not like. Though, I've not met them officially. Only two of the six have a 1st grader.

So, the first day I picked Turner up from school, I stood under a tree with great shade, and I noticed a mom group congregating nearer to the playground. The next time, I sat nearer to the playground and the mom group stood under the tree. The tree, I've come to see, is their usual territory. These women seem to know each other, perhaps from Kindergarten or because they have older kids attending Jones. They laugh out loud and seem to talk often about some of the teachers. Not to say anything negative about them, but to make explicit the things they know about a teacher's personal life, which is of course a negative practice. But whatever. I'd just like to make friends. Preferably women who like to drink wine and talk about social politics. I'm thinking I need a new scene to find such richness of conversation.

The dad scene is much more active and inviting. All the dads have talked to me. They are often involved in kid play, which might be what Andy does. I can imagine him chasing kids and helping pull one or more out of a tree. Since I'm usually in work clothes, which has included heels nearly everyday, playing is not practical or possible.

On Tuesday I'm sitting at the picnic table in full sun, heels, skirt, and a much too warm black long-sleeve shirt. Turner runs to me occasionally, as usual, to update me on who he is playing with and what they are doing. He keeps me abreast of who is a "friend" and who is just someone he knows or has seen or happens to know his name. Turner, like his mother, is pretty crappy at remembering names.

On this day, I'm swatting sweat bees and melting. Turner is as far from me as he can get, lurking (kind of) around a group of boys under a tree in the corner of the playground yard. I look up just in time to catch his eye, and he takes off running to me as fast as possible. Halfway there, he throws his arms wide and thrusts his chest to the sun. He flies over to me, circling this way and then that, as his feet pound the grass. I'm thinking, he's going to trip and fall because he's looking at the sky and not the ground. He gets to me, takes a big swig of water, and says, "Though those guys aren't my friends, I gave them a handy hint about life." He swigs more water and wipes sweat from his hair.

"Oh yeah. And what was that?" I ask.

"I told them that the more aerodynamic you are, the faster you can run." Another drink of water. "And I'm so glad that on the way up to you I remembered to put my head back. The chin is more aerodynamic I think." He pauses. I nod my head, unsure of what he expects me to say. If I wait long enough, he'll usually give me a hint about what my response should be. "Mom?! So what do you think?"

"About the chin thing?"

He looks at me like I'm very unintelligent, "Uh of course the chin thing. Was my flight convincing?"

"I was totally persuaded by it." He smiles.

"Good." He gives me a hug, which is all hot and sweaty and delicious. Then he says, "Well, I guess we can go now. I've done all I can do here."

All the firsts of first grade.

1. Girls

The first day of school Turner made friends with three girls: Ella (who wears glasses all the time), Lilly, and ____. He sat next to Ella at lunch. The pattern was open-toed shoes next to closed-toe shoes. On day two, Turner became friends with Fiona. The lunch pattern was boy next to girl. He sat next to Fiona at lunch. After school on day two, today, Turner played for about an hour on the playground and big grassy area with trees. We were the first two on the playground after the bell rang. Another mom and her first grade son (Price, who is in T's class) came to play, but Turner was interested only in playing with the girls. He played on the swinging bridge and slide with Kamira, a girl who sat at T's table the first day of school. (She seemed really shy that day, but by day two she had lots to explain to me as we inspected shiny rocks and ants under the mulch.) A group of girls gathered under a tree in the yard, and Turner rushed over to them, and one of the girls splintered off to play with Turner. It looked like at times he and Ella were playing cheetah games. After about thirty minutes of play, running from one tree to another, lots of stealing of shoes and building some sort of nest, Ella's attention was redirected to the group of girls sitting under the tree. In her absence, Turner walked over to a couple of boys and stood shyly to the side for about five minutes. Then he walked over to the group of girls under the tree and was quickly turned away. He came to me next, with tears. He said he asked the girls if he could play their game and one of them, not Ella, said it was for girls only. As he says "girls" he draws out the "ir" and puts his hands on his hip. I responded, "Gosh. That seems silly and unfair." He agreed. I asked what happened when he tried to play with the boys, and he said, "You know, I just don't want to play with boys. I played with boys all last year and all the years since I was a baby. So this year I'm playing only with girls."

2. Ms. Alissa

Turner's teacher is about my age, and she has the most positive energy about her. Turner says she is very nice, and more than one person that I've met at the university or out in the community has described her as the "nicest" and "sweetest" teacher. Ms. Alissa hails from a family of educators; her mother and father teach at Dickson Elem, her sister teaches at Jones (kindergarten), and her brother (who passed away a few years ago) taught at Dickson Elem. The day before the first day of school, Turner and I went to meet her. She explained that she took sabbatical last year in order to study abroad (destination unknown to me), but her boyfriend became her fiancé and she stayed in Asheville instead. She said she taught because she had a passion for living, and I thought this was a thoughtful way of describing the work of educating young people. I expressed to her my respect for her work and told her something I'm sure no other parent said to her, "My son, he's very smart. He loves to read." She smiled sweetly and mooned over him while he drew a self-portrait for the bulletin board.

A few tokens that might better describe Ms. Alissa. She has a compliment jar in her classroom. When a student does something good during the day, Ms. Alissa adds a marble to the compliment jar. She can take marbles out too. Once the jar is full, there is a celebration. Turner knows of only two options so far, though Ms. Alissa says there are many, many kinds of celebration. Potential celebrations include getting recess and getting to come back in and watch a movie and getting to take your shoes off at the door and chew bubble gum all day. When I heard about this I asked Turner if it was sugar free gum and he said, "We'll have to make certain of that." As I stood in the hallway today waiting for Turner, there were children lining up along the walls and adults organizing them into bus riders, alternative transport 1 and 2. It was crazy. I stood with my mouth gaping as three women put hands on every kid and placed them in a line in a matter of one or two minutes. A well-oiled machine. I stood thinking about Aunt LaLa and what I had falsely envisioned as her bus duty; this was so much more than my assumptions. Every day hundreds of kids get shuffled out of schools and organized by transportation needs and somehow so few kids get lost, overlooked, stolen, forgotten, misdirected. More than one little boy passed me with tears in his eyes today and within a moment an adult was at his side offering reassurance: "I know where you are suppose to be, don't worry." She probably said it just like that every single time. After reading the little bus on the boys' shirts, she slid each one into the appropriate line. When Ms. Alissa opened her door, she is the first classroom in the hallway, children filed out neatly and quietly, each one stopping for a hug at the door. Every single child was hugged. My first grade teacher, Mrs. Johnson, hugged me everyday when I left too. Watching Alissa bend to every child, offering individual praise or affirmation brought on the sudden urge to cry. It just felt so sweet and absolutely perfect for my first grader. When it was Turner's turn at the door, he was surprised to see me I think, and he ran to hug me first. Then he went back and hugged Alissa. I'm not sure what she said to him, but he laughed and then came over and patted me on the leg. "It was a good day Mom. You don't even have to ask."

3. First tardy

Last year in Tucson I'm pretty sure Andy and I won the award for kid most tardy. Today, Turner and I tried desperately to leave the house on three occasions. On our first attempt at putting shoes on and going out the door, I remembered his teeth. "Did you brush your teeth?" No. So he went to brush his teeth. Not worried because it was just then 7:15 am. School starts at 7:55 am. Yesterday, as we were about to leave a 20 ounce water battle was dumped all over the dining room floor, thus delaying our leave time until 7:25 am. We made it on time yesterday. Turner came back with sparkling teeth and we put shoes on again. I reminded him of his lunch box and we get in the car. I don't have my computer (which i never even used today . . .). I rushed up the stairs and retrieved it. We drove about three minutes down the road. "T, you got your lunch box, yes?" Silence. Long silence. I looked in the rear view mirror and he had his hand over his eyes. We turned around and went back. We pulled out of the driveway at 7:40 am. I sped all the way there as I told Turner how risky this was given the amount of cops patrolling Woodfin (information courtesy of our neighbors). The fog looked beautiful over the lake, so we slowed down and took that in (40 mph). We caught a few green lights and arrived in the parking lot a minute after the bell rang. When I dropped him in Ms. Alissa's class, she smiled at me sweetly over the head of a little girl telling a big story. I helped Turner put his stuff in its spot and to make his lunch selection. All the other kids are sitting at their desk engaged in an activity. There isn't play time in the morning if you are early as was the case at Cragin Elem. T and I kissed and Ms. Alissa made eye contact again. I explained, "We forgot the lunch box." She said, "Take a deep breath." Yes, that sounded good. So I went to yoga and breathed for a solid 90 minutes.