When a friend told me she was filling out preschool applications, I confess to experiencing some minor, okay major, heart palpitations. My friend's son is almost exactly Eliza's age. This is New York, the city where confident, caring mothers dissolve into water at the headmaster of the right school's feet. There are women who act as Ari Gold-type agents (please tell me you know this reference) to get certain kids into the best private schools. In short, nothing fills me with more fear than the idea of trekking through the New York City educational system.
That's the beauty of a baby. They cry, they poopy, you wipe the tears, you sop up the poopy. Then suddenly around their first birthday, they stand up, start talking and the poopy, though much stinkier and less appealing, becomes the least of your worries. They morph from little babies to little people, whose needs now extend to the world outside your home. And in New York, that world can feel like a super thick, super high-tech plexiglass ceiling.
