Chapter 3 of Preschool Confessions

August 21.      

“Jessica Swanson! It’s so wonderful to finally meet you! I feel like we’ve known each other for ages since we’ve had so much back and forth with your emails and phone calls.

This one’s thorough, I tell you--”  Mason DeRae gestured towards me with his right thumb and spoke out of the side of his mouth, although no one was actually in the hall but the two of us.

He looked in person just the way he did on TV. He was in his mid-sixties (well, 67. I had googled him), and wore his silver hair in short spikes. In commercials he always had on white linen pants and a bright Hawaiian short-sleeved button shirt, and evidently that’s the norm, because that’s what he was wearing today, along with fancy man sandals with no socks.

Mason pulled me in for a big bear hug, and held on a bit too long for my comfort level. He also was one of those back strokers—he rubbed his hand up and down my spine during the forced embrace, as if he was hunting for a bra strap. I felt immediately tense and on guard.

“Let’s show you around and get you situated, shall we? You can put your stuff in my office.” Mason pointed a fat finger towards a dark wood door on the other side of the front entry with the words “owner” etched in the glass window.

“So let’s see. You have two little ones, right? Where they at today?”

“I left them home with grandma. I wanted to get settled and fill out paperwork today without distraction. I spoke to Donna, and we agreed that they’ll begin sometime next week.”

“Excellent. Donna knows her stuff.” Mason jolted, and patted down his pants. “Excuse me, my pants are talking.” He removed a tiny cell phone from his back pocket, and unfolded it.

“DeRae here. Yes, let’s do that. Okay. On my way.”

“Jess? I’m going to need for you to stay here, and I’ll send Donna down to show you around the school. I need to go to our McDonnell site. We’ll catch up before the end of the day.”

He grasped my hand in a firm handshake, sandwiching it between both hands. I noticed that he had a ring on both pinkies, but was not wearing a wedding band.

Chapter 2 of Preschool Confessions

 still July 12.

Tom walked in the door at 5:15 on the dot and was promptly brought to his knees with a flurry of hugs and commotion. “Daddy! Daddy’s home!”

The girls always hear him arrive. It doesn’t matter how quietly he opens the front door, or if he sneaks in through the kitchen sliding door—they can sense his presence and immediately run full force right into him, until forced to kneel down or sit on the couch. Paige, our three-year-old was explaining the difference between the letter ‘m’ and ‘n,’ while Brooke, 21 months, sat on Tom’s knee, and sucked her fingers.

“Smells great in here. What’s for dinner?” Tom asked when he was able to unwrap the girls and walk into the kitchen.

“Nothing fancy. Frozen pot roast and potatoes.”

“Sounds good. I like pot roast.”

Tom seemed a bit distracted. He picked up the pile of mail, and opened the PennySaver. Tom has never opened a PennySaver in the 15 years I’ve known him.

“Tom? Things okay?”

“Yes. Well, no. Well, we’re moving.”

And that was that. I learned that his company had grown too big too fast, and the local economy couldn’t support the growth. I learned that people were getting laid off. People I knew. People I knew to have families, to have mortgages, to have healthcare bills. I learned that in order to continue his current employment status we’d have to move to a bigger metropolitan area.

I learned that I needed to go back to work.

There wasn’t time to freak out. There wasn’t time to do much of anything—Tom had called Patty, the realtor from the car, and she was on the way over. I nodded as I served tiny pieces of meat and potatoes in sectioned plastic dishes to the kids. I nodded as Tom explained how “good all of this would be for us.” I nodded as he pointed out that I had wanted to go back to work for a while. I nodded as he explained we’d be closer to family, and have more opportunity to go out by ourselves, to get away from the kids.

I nodded as I cleared the dishes, filled the dishwasher, and started the coffee pot. I remembered Patty liked super strong black coffee.

I nodded along as I got the kids situated on the couch with their blankies, and started Toy Story 2.

I nodded and signed my name and then initialed wherever Patty told me to.

I nodded and agreed to show the house within 30 minutes of a realtor’s (any realtor) phone-call. I agreed that in “this economy” we couldn’t be picky, and I needed to drop everything in order to show the house. I nodded and agreed to pack up most of the kids’ toys—I agreed there was no need to pigeon-hole our house as only a home for young children.

I quietly cried myself to sleep that night.