au revoir, les enfants

Today is the last day of garderie, the little nursery school where G has spent the better part of Monday and Wednesday afternoons for the past year. I didn't realize that this was the last week until this past Monday -- there is a slightly Byzantine system of "regular time" versus "holiday time" (is it like ordinary time in the church calendar? I don't know.) that I tried to understand for several months until I just gave up and showed up when I was told. Anyway, most months have a bit of each, so when I paid for July's holiday sessions back in June (there are different accounting systems for each kind of time), I assumed that Madame le directrice would prompt me for the regular payment, just as she does for the kleenex and boxes of dry biscuits and the fact that I really shouldn't be giving the baby his pacifier any longer. But here we were, a week into July, and not a word. So on Monday afternoon, after I had dropped G off with the teachers, I asked if I could pay for the rest of July.

Madame looked confused (not an expression generally viewed on the lady in question) and said, "Mais, ce n'est pas necessaire. You have already paid."

"I know I paid for the holiday time," I said, "but don't I need to pay for the rest of July?"

Again, confusion. "Mais, aprés cette semaine, il n'y a plus. C'est fini. It's finished." She gestured at me with both hands in the air, briskly but not unkindly, as if to wave away my stupidity which was an embarrassment to us both. And she threw me a bone: "But he can come back on Tuesday to say goodbye, if you like."

And that was that.

As much as whatever actually happened at the garderie was and remains a black box to me -- they whisk the children away the minute you arrive and encourage you strongly to vanish, so that they can continue with the black magic, the infant sacrifices, and the nursery rhymes, I suppose -- it has been a constant in G's life and now it is done, the first unstacked block in the structure of the life we've built in the last couple of years. So I'm feeling disproportionately unsettled and not a little sentimental, even near tears a couple of times today.

I've actually had more conversation with G's teachers in the last two weeks than in the entirety of the previous year -- they seemed to like him, they always smiled when I picked him up -- on account of some mild behavior problems involving, unless my translation is completely in error, his lying down on some of the other children when they did not comply with his wishes (or maybe just didn't appeal to him). That is how I found out that up to that point he had been "un des plus cooperatifs." No one seemed to be very worried, they just wanted to let me know. I was a little distressed, of course -- no one wants her child to be a bully, particularly not when they have several times the body mass of their playmates. Still, the last few weeks on the playground haven't revealed much more violence beyond the usual two-year-old capriciousness, and he really does try to share (even if it occasionally takes the form of "you'll bloody well take this car if it's the last thing I do."). And the reports from the last days have been glowing.

I'm not really sure what will happen when I pick him up today. I don't even know the names of all his teachers, and it is hard to say that I will miss the garderie beyond the spare hours it has given me these many afternoons. And yet these are people who know my child, who have not hurt him, who have taught him, among other things, a startling amount of French, a good bit of manners, and how to bend over in a yoga position to have his diaper changed. Valuable life lessons, all. Who knows what great novel may come pouring forth from G when he sits down some afternoon with a dry biscuit and a cup of warm apple juice?

I might cry, I'm sure I'll feel silly, and then I'll take him home, leaving another tiny piece of childhood behind on Avenue Victor Hugo. I think this is what they mean by nostalgie.