June 2, 7 a.m.: Our son, Walter, is 18 months old, and today is the first day of what you might call daycare. The place we signed up for, however, considers itself a “school.” The curriculum — touted as building “school readiness, career readiness, and life readiness” — includes a STEAM program and Spanish classes, putting my four years of stumbling to the finish line of a liberal arts degree to shame.
June 2, 9 a.m.: We arrive in the Rhinos classroom. One window lets in the kind of light that a well-behaved inmate receives. We meet a young woman named Erika, whose face exhibits the level of stress of someone living through a Category 5 hurricane. From 7 a.m. until 6 p.m., the winds whip and the rain pours. Erika is there, listening to the sounds of screaming children and breathing in the aroma of blowout diapers.
June 2, 4:53 p.m.: Walter’s daily report documents a young man on the path to global success — cognitive development lessons include observing photos of Asian art, and the self-help module includes washing dishes in the sink. He doesn’t wash his plate at home, though, nor does he speak any of that Spanish we were promised. He screams American screams fueled by a severe diaper rash that results from the challenge of soothing 16 butts.
June 9, 11:37 p.m.: One week with children of different degrees of disgustingness — some displaying dried boogers around the nose, others visibly leaking green mucus as thick as roux — is officially in the books. Walter wakes every couple of hours with a cough that sounds like the sputtering engine on an old Pontiac attempting to drive over a mountain pass.
June 10, 2 p.m.: It’s a double ear infection. The doctor prescribes an antibiotic, to be administered via mouth syringe. Walter throws up, coughing so hard that I ponder calling 911.
June 20, 3 p.m.: Conjunctivitis is the diagnosis. In layman’s terms, that’s pink eye. We hold Walter down on his changing table as he attempts to writhe away from the drip of drops needed to clear up the feces-fueled illness.
June 28, 6:04 a.m.: I attempt to speak when I wake up. Nothing comes out. The germs Walter has brought home during his weeks of intermittent school attendance have been waging war on my previously pandemic-quarantining immune system. My wife and I greet the mornings with a toast of DayQuil.
July 11, 7:10 a.m.: It’s been a solid two-week stretch. Sure, there’s been another ear infection for Walter, and my voice is still operating at about 60 percent, but those daily reports include learning sign language, studying nature, and continuing what surely will be a journey to an Ivy League scholarship. We look in the crib. An alien stares back at us. The dots we noticed the night before are now a sea of red splotches covering half his face.
July 11, 3 p.m.: The doctor walks us through what to do with this severe case of hand, foot, and mouth disease: nothing at all except wait for these lesions to be pus-free before sending him back to school. I confuse this diagnosis with foot and mouth, which only affects livestock, though at this point I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of it somehow circulating at our daycare. The doctor discards her latex gloves, wishes us good luck, then turns before exiting. “It gets better,” she promises. “Their immune systems get stronger. Just give it like three years.”