The night before

The last few days have been a mad rush to get everything organised. We braved queues at Bibi and Baba (Singapore's biggest uniform-mart), Bata (Shoes, twice!), Popular (stationery supplies) and Ikea (Storage and shelving).

I think we're as done as we can be. We've washed, labelled and wrapped all that we could.

But in all this, it had actually slipped our minds that we had six year olds who were slightly dazed at all the instructions barked at them, the shoes with laces on them and the long list of what they could and could not do in school. We also forgot that it was going to be the first time that the twins were not going to be in the same school.

As they crawled into bed with me this evening, their fears that they'd been suppressing all this while came right to the forefront.

"What if I get chased by zombies in school?" (This came from Evan and it made me think about why Joss Wheedon wrote Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

"What if I do something accidentally and it is wrong?" (Jordan, worried because she is very clueless, especially when she doesn't have Evan to yell at her when she does something wrong)

"What if I forget my water bottle or lose something?" (Jordan, recalling how I read her the riot act when she came home from school twos days consecutively without her bottle)

"Can you write me a check list?" (Jordan, trying to make sure she covered all her bases)

The "What if" questions were relentless. Consoling them required me to convince Evan that there were no zombies in school (the subsequent question was "What if I get chased by big boys in school?" told me that my suspicions about the zombies being metaphorical were true) and assuring him that he could go and tell the teacher and tell us when he saw us if anyone- dead or undead- chased him. I also quietly swore to myself that if any kid chased or did anything else to him, he would be at the receiving end of a) my Nerf gun (yes, I have one) b) my teacher voice that causes JED to stop dead in their tracks and c) my evil teacher glare.

For Jordan, it was more about assuring her that someone would teach her the rules and if she broke rules unknowingly, no one would scold her but they would tell her not to do it again. I did have to caution her against doing something she knew it was wrong.

And of course, we prayed together; for courage and confidence to face up to new surroundings and people.

They fussed and whimpered and worried themselves to sleep. My arms were their bolsters tonight and they held on tight as they slowly and eventually fell off to sleep.

They are as ready as they will ever be and so am I, though I could use with a few more days of sleep.