Katie Goes to Daycare

"Get me down, get me down," Katie insists. Even before I stop the stroller she is tugging at her seatbelt. She doesn't know how the clasp works but seems convinced that sheer force of will is all that it will take to bound free. I get her down and she runs fearlessly up the steep marble steps to Ellen's house, her stuffed piglet clasped in one hand. She stands tiptoe on the ledge of the final step and tries to open the storm door. I tell her to be careful not to fall and she doesn't care. At two years, Kate has little concern for her father's anxieties.

My friends say that Katie looks just like me and my family says that she looks nothing like me. I watch her closely, but she is too slender and too graceful to remind me much of myself. Her fine, light-brown hair with its slight wave in back doesn't match my straight, dark hair. And her eyes come from her mother, dark brown and distinctively Latvian. But when she sleeps, her mouth slightly open, I can see my face in her cheeks, chin, and teeth.

On the other side of the door, Katie's friend Max whines. Ellen almost opened the door before he'd peeked through the mail slot. The metal flap goes up and Max's wide, brown eyes look out. "Katie, Katie!" he says. Katie stamps her feet with excitement. Ellen opens the green wooden door and Katie points directly at Max. "I like you," she announces magnanimously.

Ellen smiles and helps Kate off with her pink jacket. Ellen is a large, strong woman who mixes kindness and firmness--with the parents, as much as with the children. Her long black hair matches her long black dresses and black tights. She walks through her house pale-skinned and barefoot. Ellen has two standard poodles, Zenni and Hedgey, much larger than any of the kids who poke, prod, and slap them with impunity. Ellen has no children of her own. Thus far, I have only heard Kate call Ellen "Mommy" once.

For the past year Katie has gone to Ellen's house for daycare, three days a week. As graduate students, Marina and I couldn't manage without daycare, but like all good parents we wrung our hands and wore sackcloth at first. Would our only child be safe? Would she hate us? Would the separation from her beloved parents scar her permanently?

We feared most, of course, what really came true: That Kate would love daycare, would love the children she met there, and most of all, that she would love Ellen. Parents guard jealously their children's affections. We all know that our children will come to have experiences and relationships beyond home. We didn't know how soon Katie would have them. I remember first realizing that my daughter had a long life ahead that would have nothing to do with me. Marina and I had come for afternoon pick-up. The kids were playing upstairs. Lucy, an older child who has since gone on to kindergarten, greeted me, so I didn't see Katie at first. When I turned to find my daughter she looked straight at me with a pacifier in her mouth. We never used a pacifier with her at home. But here she was, indulging in a habit which I knew nothing about! To me it was as if I had caught her smoking a cigar.

Maxie, the boy at the mail slot, is Katie's current boyfriend. He has dark skin, curly hair, dimples and a toothy, pursed-lip smile. Max will grow up gorgeous. Max has an important question for Kate: "Do you have undies or diapers?"

Katie pauses; she can't remember. "I don't know, I can show you," she says, and pulls her pants down. She's wearing the panties with the pink hearts. "I have undies, actually, Maxie." She taps her crotch in demonstration. Max squeals with approval. Ellen pulls Kate's pants up again. Kate hugs Max and tries to kiss him. This forwardness worries Max, who says to Ellen, "I don't want Katie to talk to me and kiss me and hug me." Ellen says that Kate can talk but shouldn't kiss if Max doesn't like it. Katie laughs and does something else.

I'm astonished by how easily Kate attracts (and handles) her men. My own shyness with the opposite sex started in kindergarten and continues to this day, but Kate looks like she knows her stuff. When she started coming to Ellen's, a four-year-old boy named Nolan announced that he was going to marry her. Each day when Katie arrived, he put his arms tightly about her. Ellen had to tell him not to squeeze too hard. Nolan offered my daughter toys and grabbed her legs, tried to scare her by pretending to be a snake or a dinosaur. In spite of all this, Katie had nothing to do with Nolan. Instead, she gave her affections to Ryan. Ry-Ry is a friendly, sleepy-looking boy with a wide grin who has been slow to talk. Kate favored Ry-Ry until three months ago, and he followed her docilely and offered her toys in gratitude. But somewhere along the line she has lost interest in the gentle, quiet boy in favor of the more vocal and active Max. I like Max, but my heart goes out to Ryan.

Each time I step into Ellen's house I know I am a visitor in my daughter's world. Perhaps in sixteen years when I visit her dorm room I will have a similar feeling. Dropping Katie off and picking her up, I look about the living room for hints of her life. An olive and maroon striped damask sofa rests alongside a low tile table, strewn with plastic stegosauruses and diplodicuses. Next to it sits an empire arm chair upholstered with stars, moons, suns and planets like a sorcerer's robes. A low chaise lounge covered with leopard-print fabric appeared a month ago. Ellen says that the kids like to sprawl on their backs on the chaise and pretend to be kings and queens; I stretch out myself and try to act royal. Ellen has filled the room with other bric-a-brac: a black wooden shelf contains kewpie dolls and jack-in-the-boxes, an aquarium houses a half-dozen enormous goldfish and another plastic dinosaur, and the marble fireplace mantle has rows painted wooden figures from Mexico, speckled pack animals and Dias de los Meurtos figures. In one corner stands a miniature house large enough for three children to play inside. When I try the house myself the children laugh and tell me I don't fit.

The upstairs playroom holds more talismans and hidden places of my child's secret life: a large plywood climbing structure with caves cut into it and slides leading down from it; another house with a staircase and a loft and PVC tubes running from top to bottom for rolling balls through; on the wall, framed lace, antique silhouettes, quilted landscapes, dream catchers, and Georgia O'Keefe posters; a ball pool containing red, green, and blue plastic balls; a miniature orange tree, a fish mobile, a play kitchen and washer and drier, seashells, a birdhouse on the window, and everywhere, toys: rocking toys, puzzles, pop-ups, shape-sorters, balls, blocks.

There's no way we can compete with this, Marina said the first time we saw the room.

The children are in the upstairs playroom as Kate's friend Sarah, age three, and her baby sister, Rebecca, arrive. Sarah and Beck were adopted from China, and both have beautiful tan skin and straight black hair. Sarah jumps up and down for Ellen. Sarah likes jumping because no one else at Ellen's can jump yet. Sarah got most of the attention at Ellen's before Katie arrived--but she has befriended her rival.

Sarah and Kate talk while Beck crawls off to play by herself. Finding himself without a playmate, Max kicks a blue floor pillow about. Sarah looks worried and says, "No Max!" She sits next to Katie on gold-trimmed black stepstool and the two hold hands. Max circles the two girls, shaking a box of refrigerator magnets.

Ellen suggests that Max tell Sarah what the plans are for the day--she's told him earlier that they're going to the Arboretum. Maxie says that Sarah and Katie are going to find leaves and adds, "I want to come too!"

Kate announces that she alone wants a leaf, and Sarah suggests that they make a "whole pile" of leaves.

This Friday afternoon, everyone is once again in the upstairs playroom. Ryan is here and Ryan and Max have the red sorting toys. Max happily sticks yellow circles, stars, and ovals into the appropriate holes, but Ryan whimpers, pushing a hexagon against a crescent-shaped hole. Katie drops her plastic frying pan and snatches Ryan's sorting toy when he sets it down. But Ry-Ry hasn't finished playing with it, and tries to get it back. "Oh Ry-Ry!" she says when he puts his hand up to her shoulder, "get off me!"

Ryan smiles sweetly and wanders over to blankets under the changing table. He picks up a pink fringed one and wraps it around his head. Immediately Kate drops her newly-procured toy and says, "I want the pink blanket."

Ellen tells her no, Ry-Ry had it first. Ryan smiles his patient smile and selects a multicolored knit blanket to offer Kate. Kate doesn't want it, but she has a suggestion: "Ry-Ry needs it?" Ryan backs up, unsure what to do next. He looks for another goodwill offering and selects one of the sorting shapes. But now Maxie vies for Kate's attention by offering a plastic phone.

"Oh, thanks," Kate says to Max, and Ry-Ry is left with the yellow circle in his hand.

Watching Katie at daycare, I think about personality. Her social skills are so complex that I wonder where she got them--maybe from her Mother? I dig out my old developmental psychology notes to see what Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget have to offer.

Erikson says Kate is in the second stage of her development, characterized by a conflict or "crisis" between autonomy versus doubt and shame. If this is true, I have yet to see Kate exhibit the "doubt and shame" side. Piaget says Katie is in the "preoperational" stage of development, beginning to have symbolic abilities like language and imagination, but lacking the logic required for full mental operation. It is a time marked by extreme egocentrism, when cannot generalize from their experiences. The inability to generalize I disagree with--Katie has been able to make judgments about all cats by watching our cat, or even to make erroneous judgments about all children by comparing them to herself--but the egocentrism bit is on the money.

I am not a developmental psychologist, but Kate has convinced me of one thing: people's habits may change, their abilities may change, but our basic personalities are set from birth. For better or worse, Katie is what she was when she was born: loving, loyal, independent, strong-willed, stubborn. She isn't, and won't become, her father, who will not return an incorrect order at a restaraunt to avoid hurting the waiter's feelings. When Kate was delivered in the hospital her right hand popped out along with her head, firmly clutching her umbilical cord in an assertion of defiance.

At pick-up time, after the afternoon snack, the children are still at the dining table, yelling to each other about the day's activities when the first ring comes at the door. Immediately, the chorus goes up:

"My mommy!"

"No, my mommy!"

"My mommy, my mommy, my mommy!"

The competition is fierce: whose Mommy loves them the most? Kate, Max and Sarah run to peek through the mail slot. Beck and Ryan sit watching from the table. If it is someone other than Max's mother, Maxie will burst out crying.

One by one the mothers, and occasionally the fathers, come to pick the children up. Now the house is chaos: Mothers chat about new teeth and new clothes while the children chase each other or eke one final snuggle out of Ellen's lap. Most do their best to avoid getting shoes and coats on. Ry-Ry has the hardest time leaving: he goes limp and starts to wail. Ellen waits patiently as his mother pries her son loose from Ellen's leg. He sobs wordlessly. The other children don't care. Katie tumbles giggling into her mother's lap. Now that the day has ended she seems as happy to leave Ellen behind as she was to leave me behind this morning.

On her way out, Sarah notices my notebook and asks what I'm doing. I tell her I'm writing about what daycare is like. "Do you have anything you'd like to say about Ellen?"

Sarah says plenty: "I like to play there. I like Ellen. I like napping. And could you write that I like to pet the poodles? Their names are Zenny and Hedgey." She watches with satisfaction as I jot down her remarks. Katie sees me writing and asks what I'm doing. I tell her that I'm writing about her and Ellen and is their anything she'd like me to write?

"Katie Maia McCoy," she says without hesitation. And then, "write it down."

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