Tears for Fears

Jiejie had a grueling week this week. That all-important teaching tool, the two-pocket folder, was at the center of the drama. In first grade, the teacher hands out laminated color coded folders, one to a customer. The folders can last all year and the kid are to do their best to preserve and protect them. We ran out of juice boxes and milk boxes and sent her lunchtime drink to school in a "leakproof" water bottle, It leaked over everything. Dad tried to patch the folder with tape, and mom, at Jiejie's insistence, wrote a note to express her desire for another chance with a new folder. The powers-that-be in first grade decided the folder was still usable.

The next day, a Friday, we tried another leakproof water bottle because in our busy, slacker household no one had had time to run out for the juice boxes that are such a convenience to the kids, yet such a waste of money and packaging. It leaked. Everywhere. It destroyed the school picture form, the homework, the seams of the folder.

By the beginning of the next week, we had juice boxes. Ewe also had an inconsolable Jiejie who huddled on my lap at breakfast (OK, the lap at breakfast is not unusual; It's our special time.) in tears. She would not eat, take her vitamins or brush her teeth. She would not go out the door to the school bus. She cried barrels of mournful tears. At last the problem came to light; the folder was an impossible problem, the teacher had said no to a new one, how would Jiejie ever carry her schoolwork? Now this is a child who has a lot of anxiety about scrutiny at school. Folders and backpacks have always been a problem. Where to put them, how to unload them, what if she did something wrong. Jiejie had no qualms about carrying Silky in her backpack, Silky is the name given to several pieces of silk around the house: some pillowcases we bought in Hong Kong, the accompanying sheet, too tissuey-thin to really sleep under but great to ball up and cuddle, and most recently an old magenta sheath from my party-girl days.
Sometimes the assignments never come out of the backpack. Two weeks ago the kids were asked to bring in an example of a pattern. We strove to find something that would fit in the backpack The best we could do was a lovely pillowcase with a border crocheted by my grandmother. It never got to the teacher.

Her tears appealed to my inner anxious first grader. I hurried to shower and dress and drive her to school, late of course, and show the folder to the teacher to obtain a new one. The tears stopped. I missed my bus and was late to work. She got a new folder, color-coded blue, unlaminated.

I wonder how long it will last?