Back to Life...

The stinking roiling heat is mostly abating now and the holidays are most definitely over - which means back to school time for our boys. State schools here have stupendously long holidays - from mid-June to mid- Sept, as a coping mechanism for the heat, I think. Any family who has any money or connection to family either in the mountains or by the sea clears off as soon as is possible and returns as late as possible. I had a peripatetic time, starting in late June with a visit to friends in the UK, then to the Dolomites then to Spain to stay with my parents. It meant that this year, I have not noticed the heat half as much and hence am (relatively) sane going into Autumn.

Private nurseries start back earlier here, as a response to parents returning to their jobs, I expect. So Giorgio and Edo have already started back at a new nursery this year. It is one of the hardest things to do, leave your children in the care of, effectively, strangers, and I struggled again with it after such a long time together. The problem for me is that there are no half measures. You can't just drop your child off for a couple of mornings a week, there is no structure for it. It is all - in our case 9am till 2pm - or nothing. I even thought of just not sending them this year. But then the thought of us all at home alone through the dark days of winter soon sent me scurrying back to the school gates. Which relates to another feature of life as a mum in our part of Italy - I am in a party of one here. Every other mum friend of mine works, so is obliged to send their child to nursery. There just don't seem to be stay-at-home mums around. If I go to the park during the day during school-time, by far the majority of carers there with the children are grandparents. A distant second are foreign mums - by which I mean, generally, young Romanian, Albanian etc mums. So even if I didn't send the boys to nursery - what on earth would do every day?? There are only so many trips to the same parks you can make and they need to play with other children. There are no playgroups, no music groups to speak of. They are starting with swimming lessons soon, so great, that's two hours a week occupied, what do we do for the other gazillion hours a week we are home alone?? If it sounds like I'm justifying myself, well, I suppose I am, but times have changed and little kids can't just go out in the morning with their bikes and roam around with their mates all day before heading in for dinner in the evening. It definitely would end up with one or both of them being scraped off the road below in a very short time, apart from anything, but also - what responsible parent doesn't know where their children are every hour of every day these days?

So the new nursery is lovely, a Montessori with different games and things to do on every table, a big room for painting and drawing, sand boxes, a big park with swings and slides and wendy houses outside. We are really happy with it and so were the boys at first... They went in with great enthusiasm, even with tears when they had to go home but as reality bites, that they are there for the duration, we've had the odd collywobble of a morning... As I walked out this morning past the nursery for very small children, all I seemed to hear was the little ones crying for their mummies. Mine had been given lots of hugs and promises of things to do when they get home and seemed happy, finally, to get down to some painting - but the sound of so many tears on the way out very nearly made me wheel around and go to scrape them up in my arms and leave and never come back. I am hoping that we settle into the routine happily, both me and the boys, and get used to the mornings away from each other again. Of course we will but in the back of my head, there is a little voice that says, 'they're only young once, what are you doing sending them to school already???'. I am also hoping that that little voice quietens down too once they get properly settled...