My little grandson’s first day of kindergarten appears to have been a great success. He’s finally at the same school as his third-grade brother, he liked his classmates and his teacher, and he gave rave reviews to the cafeteria food.
But there was a problem.
Apparently, kindergarten involved getting rid of butterflies.
My grandson loves butterflies and has always been under the impression they were good, and certainly not something a kindergarten teacher wouldn’t want for him. Although, what did he even know about kindergarten anyway?
Here’s what happened. On the first day of school, his teacher served the class a cup of something called “jitter juice,” a sweet, fruit-flavored drink designed to chase off the nervousness that comes with starting a new chapter in life. She also sent home a little packet of “jitter glitter” to sprinkle under his pillow that night.
“And it will get rid of all the butterflies,” he told his mom, mournfully.
How could such a nice teacher be so mean to such beautiful creatures?
Still, he dutifully drank his juice and sprinkled his glitter because everyone else seemed excited about it. But the truth was, he didn’t feel good about the whole thing. He kept coming back to how wrong it was, this getting rid of butterflies.
His mother, who is also a teacher, sat him down and explained the concept of “jitters” and “butterflies in your stomach.”
This only made things worse.
Now, apparently, there were butterflies in his stomach. He knew for sure he hadn’t eaten any, so how did they get in there? What the heck was going on?
He’s not really one to get nervous, as it happens. Shy sometimes, maybe. Hesitant. But nervous?
He patted his stomach gravely and reported that he couldn’t feel any butterflies in there at all.
Which makes sense because, duh. He drank the jitter juice.
So cheers to all the creative teachers who devote their lives to easing little people into big new worlds. And especially to the ones teaching five-year-olds to recognize and name what they’re feeling, a skill some of us are still working on in our sixties.
As for me, his Mimi, I’d like to order a gallon of the jitter juice and several cases of the glitter, please.
I’ve waited nearly seven decades for someone to tell me my nerves could be calmed with a fruit-flavored beverage and something sparkly under my pillow.
I come from a long line of worriers. My mother is a champion. My grandmother could have gone pro. I had hoped, somewhere along the way, to be the one who broke the chain.
Alas, it was not to be. In fact, my own girls can worry up a storm.
Over the years I’ve tried plenty of my own versions of jitter juice: running, meditation, prayer, breathing, watercolor painting, novel writing, and lots and lots of list making. I’ve even been known to make lists of the lists I’ve already made, while reminding myself that most of the things I’ve worried about never happened, and that worrying about them didn’t prevent the ones that did.
Maybe that’s what I like so much about the jitter juice and the glitter. They don’t actually makethe butterflies disappear. They give a five-year-old a little magical way of saying: I know this feeling, and I can make it fly away.
Here’s hoping this new generation figures it out better than the ones that came before.
