Pre--D Day

Well, today is pre-D day. Kindergarten orientation day is upon us. This is the day before kindergarten begins, where all the brand new kindergarten students and their parents meet with Miss Sauce's teacher in their new classroom. We spend an hour there together, familiarizing ourselves with this new reality, and - ideally - coming away with a heightened level of reassurance.

In my case, it is akin to tearing a bandage off of a wound slowly as opposed to all at once. It sounds good in theory, but in actuality, just delays and prolongs the pain. It is the dipping of the toes before tomorrows' big splash into the pool. I prefer just jumping in. But this is not about me.

As tomorrow dawns in 4 minutes, I find myself in prayer, determined to demonstrate to set myself aside to focus wholly on HER. And to satisfy myself in the moment-to-moment commitment to love my child, her teacher, the school personnel, other parents and children, and let the joy of the Lord surprise me.

But, interestingly, Miss Sauce's career in public education may be short-lived after all due to other considerations beyond my longsuffering my heart. Just today (gotta love the kismet timing), our Governor signed into law several bills (with more of the same type on the way) that give far reaching powers to a radical agenda to lawfully inflict themselves onto our children via the public education sphere. Basically, it usurps our rights as parents to educate our children according to OUR belief structure, not an unwelcome, foreign, or improper one.

Well, that is just peachy.

I find myself just simply aghast at the obvious and transparent double standard at work in our public schools. How DARE you brazenly insert your agenda into my child's education, against our will and our collective family religious beliefs and ethics, by mandating adherence to your point of view under penalty of law??!Moral, religious, anti-religious, or ethical agendizing has no place in public school system. It is far better left to families and churches to impart such instruction. Keep your rabid paws off my children's minds and hearts.

Note to the-powers-that-be in Sacramento who believe yourselves so worthy of pushing your brand of ethical and moral instruction onto my children against those held by my family: Are we a land of diversity or not? Why does your moral stand on any religious/moral/ethical/controversial topic have the legal power to trump my own in a PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM when it comes to my child? Shouldn't your attention be primarily upon crafting laws to protect and serve the families who comprise your constituency, not to propagate agendas onto our children at the behest of the few, the proud, the loud, the angry, the self-righteous? And yet you now seek to instill long-reaching punishments for our staunch divergence from your newly established moral/legal standard upon all of us who resist the lemming tendency and refuse to be 'conformed to this world'? Interestingly, the very 'Tolerance' that forms the familiar rallying cry fueling the mechanism by which these troubling laws have been passed, does not extend to those whose religious beliefs or morals prevent us from just merrily going with the program.

Just when I was developing a semblance of peace about kindergarten and the public school journey we will take the first steps of tomorrow, this new happening adds a lamentable and deeply frustrating twist. And once again, the storm clouds start to gather.