We've been working up to this for some time now. It was always our intention to send him in a couple of mornings a week, if and when we felt he was ready to take the step. And the time has definitely come; he has become incredibly sociable, stopping in shops to turn and smile as people pass him by; running up to strangers in the doctor's waiting room to make friends; chasing down the street after other Small People when we go for a walk. He is also becoming increasingly difficult to entertain, demanding all of my attention all of the time, and constantly adding new and treacherous skills to his repertoire (his latest, horrifyingly, being the ability to climb).
Little boys, I am discovering, are very different from little girls. The Small Girl, at the age of 14 months, was quiet, sweet and sedate; would tire easily and had no interest whatsoever in getting to higher ground. Her Very Small brother, on the other hand, is possessed of boundless vigour - he won't sit if he can stand, won't walk if he can run. And most of his ceaseless activity is accompanied by enthusiastic shouting and, preferably, the sound of objects being bashed mindlessly against other objects.
His first few tentative days at Playschool have affected the whole family in unexpected ways. I find it enormously reassuring that the Small Girl has been encouraged by Playschool to go on "visits" to spend time playing with her brother. And I've noticed that, even over a few days, their relationship with each other has become a lot more affectionate; he comforted by her presence and she feeling a great deal more compassion towards him. The two of them are beginning to enjoy their relationship and to understand the enormity of what it means to have someone who is more like you than anyone else in the world.
For me, although I have longed for a few hours to myself each week, it is also a period of adjustment. Just as, when the Small Girl started at Playschool, I would pace the house feeling lost and alone, so again do I have to readjust to being apart from the baby who has been at my side constantly for over a year. Wanting to keep busy, I went to the supermarket last week after dropping off the Very Small Boy. Walking down the
street without a pushchair, wheeling a supermarket trolley devoid of Small Person, I felt lonely and somehow exposed ("as if your right arm is missing", as one friend put it).I seem to have forgottoen how to deinfe myself, other than as a mother. (A few weeks back, I was in the slightly surreal position of being chatted up by a hopeful twenty-something in a bar. "Look, I'm married", I had said crossly, flashing my wedding ring. "And I have two children!". My forlorn suitor had looked surprised "I don't believe you", he had answered, and I had felt shocked that it might not be obvious that I was a mother - that my children were not somehow detectable in the air that surrounds me).
In the end, it's become a settling-in period for all of us; for the Very Small Boy as he takes a step towards independence, for the Small Girl as she becomes accustomed to the unselfish notion of empathy. And for me, as I struggle once more with my sense of identity and with the realisation that my children are growing slowly upwards, and, inexorably, away from me.
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