It's time! Tomorrow is J's first day of kindergarten. It's wonderful, in an awful kind of way.

His little backpack is ready to go, with a change of clothes and four kippot inside. His clothes for tomorrow are laid out: new jeans, a freshly ironed shirt, red socks (his choice), and his new black trainers. He says he's a little scared because everything will be different. He is, however, happy that his new class will have more boys than girls. And he thinks that his new teachers will be nice.

So I let him watch his favorite cartoon, and I tucked him into bed, and I took requests for a special bedtime concert. "Rubber Ducky" (a particularly campy version with excessive vibrato) is the runaway favorite these days, but "Sing a Song" is always popular too. He loves it when I sing "You Are My Sunshine," substituting "sugarbean" and "pumpkin" and "sweetpea" for "sunshine."

So. Kindergarten. Suddenly he looks so small, asleep in his bed with a wee stuffed panda clutched to his chest. After what's happened in the last few days, I want to snatch him up and run away from the city, away from the schools, away from the buses and subways, away from everything I don't trust. I want to be his bodyguard forever. Without this boy, I wouldn't last a moment.

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