Retrospect: my sister’s preschool

Self-tutoring about people and events from the past: the tutor reflects…

My sister is two years younger than I am. Nowadays, who cares? However, when we arrived on the base in PEI, she was 4 and I was 6. It was a big difference.

My sister went to preschool, which I never did. Where we’d lived before, there hadn’t been a convenient one, so I just stayed home until starting school. On the base, however, everything was set up: inevitably, my parents sent my sister to preschool. I think she went two or three times per week.

What she did there, I’ll never know. Curiously, she never talked about it, and I never thought to ask.

I was in grade one that year, which was a hard one for me. I was afraid of the teacher and, for a kid 5-6, the work was a lot. I was self-absorbed while I acclimatized to it.

I always walked to school, while my sister always got driven to preschool. Therefore, its location remained unknown to me for some months. I don’t even think I realized, those mornings, that after I left for school, my mother packed my sister into the car and drove her to preschool. My school began enough earlier that they were nowhere close to boarding the car when I departed in the morning. When I returned, they would be settled at home as if they’d never left.

One school morning, a few months in, I had a dental appointment. My father had a day off: we all four were in the car. We dropped my sister off at her preschool before driving on to the dentist.

I accompanied her inside, where I saw a couple dozen children already playing and having fun. There were riding toys, skipping ropes (two kids, from either end, were using one as a telephone), craft supplies, and tables, as well as lots of open space. I recall the floor was shiny hardwood. Somewhat quaintly, you walked a few steps down, from inside the entrance, to reach it. My sister threw off her coat, changed into her “inside” shoes, then did so. She ran over to some friends and, including her, they instantly started playing a game.

Returning to the car, my insides burnt a little, thinking what fun my sister was having those mornings while I struggled at school. I went to my dentist appointment, then to school for the rest of the day, and so on: we never talked of my sister’s preschool, although she continued to attend it, just as I did grade one, the rest of the year.

By around April, I’d adapted to school. With the brightening of the weather, I even began to like it: life was good. I no longer envied my sister’s time at preschool.

Nowadays, I wonder if my sister – or anyone else – recalls any of this. It’s ironic how people who live(d) in the same house can have such separate realities and recollections.