“Ella,” I reminded him.
“Ella,” he agreed with a nod. “We needed to meet today because of Maisie’s attendance record. As you know, she needs to be present for a minimum of nine hundred hours to complete kindergarten. Right now, between her absences and times she’s needed to leave early, or come late, she’s at about seven hundred and ten.”
“Okay?” I flipped through the binder to her school section, where I kept record of her days, hours, and documentation.
“We feel at this point, we need to discuss her options,” Principal Halsen said, pushing his glasses up his nose and opening the manila folder in front of him.
“Options,” I repeated, trying to understand.
“She hasn’t met the legal requirement,” Mr. Jonas said, his voice soft, but his eyes telling me that the issue was cut and dried in his opinion.
“Right.” I flipped to the letter I’d kept in a page protector and took it out of the binder. “I absolutely agree that she hasn’t met the requirement, but the district assured us in this letter dated in November that you wouldn’t hold her to it. That rule is waivable in the regulations by the district due to catastrophic illness, and that’s what you agreed to.”
I slid the letter down the table. Ms. May caught it and passed it along, sending me a sympathetic smile.
“We did. And we’re not here to throw ultimatums at you, Ella,” Principal Halsen assured me. “We’re here to discuss what’s best for Maisie. We made this agreement without looking at her long-term future.”
Because they hadn’t thought she’d make it this long.
“What’s best for Maisie…” I repeated softly. “You mean, like not having Stage Four neuroblastoma? Because I definitely agree—that’s not in her best interest.”
Mr. Jonas cleared his throat and leaned forward, resting his wrinkled, folded hands on the table. “We absolutely sympathize, Ms. MacKenzie. What your daughter has been through is tragic.”
And there went my hackles, rising as my spine straightened. “It’s not tragic, Mr. Jonas. She’s not dead.”
“Of course not, my dear. We’re not saying that any of this is fair, but the truth is that Maisie might not be ready for first grade.”
My dear. Like I was a little girl in bloomers asking for a pretty new doll. To hell with that.
“We’ve done everything you’ve asked. Ms. May has been quite accommodating, and I assure you that she’s ready.”
“She is.” Ms. May nodded.
Principal Halsen sighed, taking off his glasses and cleaning an imaginary spot. “Let’s look at this from a different angle. Can you tell us where she’s at in her treatments? What we can expect in the coming months?”
I flipped back to the sheet where I kept the estimated treatment plan, realizing we’d gotten to a point where I wasn’t sure. We were at a crossroads.
“She just completed a major surgery two weeks ago. She’s healing wonderfully and is ready to come back to school on Monday. Then the week after, we’ll be in for another round of chemo, which as you know means she’s gone a solid school week. We’re hoping her levels will remain stable enough to come back for the end of school, but there’s no telling. Then we’re into summer. I’ll know more when we go in for chemo and I can meet with her oncologist.”
The administrators shared a look that made me feel like I wasn’t on the other side of the table but the other side of the battlefield. I felt that change come over me—the one that had appeared the moment they’d placed the twins in my arms—like pieces of armor clicking into place as I prepared to defend my child.
“Have you thought about having her repeat kindergarten? If she’s in a better situation to be fully present next school year, then it wouldn’t harm her. We wouldn’t force it, of course, but it’s worth a thought. In fact, a lot of our parents hold back their children at the kindergarten stage for various reasons. Certainly this procedure qualifies—”
I snapped.
“With all due respect, it wasn’t a procedure. It was a twelve-hour, life-threatening surgery in which they removed a tumor the size of a softball from my daughter’s adrenal gland. This isn’t an inconvenience; this is cancer. And no, next year won’t be better. She’s fighting for her life, so excuse me if I don’t share your worries that she may have missed the critical day of kindergarten when you covered the life cycle of the butterfly. Statistically she might not even…” My throat closed, my body rebelling against the words I hadn’t spoken since the day they’d given me her odds. “Next year will not be better.”
“And you don’t wish for her to repeat her kindergarten year.” Principal Halsen wrote down a note in the folder.
“It’s kindergarten. Do you seriously feel like she needs to?” A repeat wouldn’t just be hard for Maisie to swallow, but for Colt as well. They’d be a year apart in school, which would mean that even if—when—she beat the cancer, she’d have to look the consequences in the eye every day.
“She doesn’t,” Ms. May spoke up. “She’s quite bright, and she’ll do just fine in first grade,” she told the administrators.
The two men conferred quietly for a moment before turning back to me. “We’d like to offer you a solution. Transfer her to an at-home program. Kindergarten isn’t as academically challenging as first grade, and next year, she’ll need the flexibility.”
“Pull her out of school.”
“School her at home,” Mr. Jonas corrected. “We’re not against you, Ms. MacKenzie, or Maisie. We’re genuinely trying to figure out the best solution. She’s not in school for the required hours, and next year her workload will increase exponentially. Couple that with the liability of having her here with her weakened immune system, the worry placed on the staff, and the other children, and we all might be more comfortable—including Maisie. She could keep the best schedule for her health if she were schooled at home.”
Other cancer moms did that. I’d spoken with a few of them, but it always seemed like they pulled them out as a last resort…when they were dying. It wasn’t so much the physical act of removing her from the school as it was the emotional acknowledgment that she couldn’t go.
And that was equally devastating to us all—Maisie, Colt, and especially me.
But it would relieve stress on her, on her levels, on the days she couldn’t get out of bed. On the mornings she spent lurched over the toilet, crying, only to look at me and swear she could make it.
“What would it entail?”
“I could teach her,” Ms. May offered. “I’d come by in the afternoons whenever she felt well enough. She’d stay on track, she’d be exempt from district hour requirements, and we’d be able to personally tailor the program.”
“Can I think about it?”
“Of course,” Mr. Jonas said, passing back the letter from early in her diagnosis.
We adjourned the meeting, and Ms. May walked out with me. I felt numb, or maybe it was simply that I’d been hit so hard and so often in the last six months that I no longer registered pain.
“Colt is just heading to lunch if you’d like to see him,” she offered.
Colt. He was exactly what I needed right now.
“I’d very much like that,” I told her.
She reached for my hand and squeezed it lightly. “He’s a phenomenal kid. He is kind, and compassionate, and defensive of the smaller kids.”
My smile was instant. “I lucked out with that guy.”
“No. He’s phenomenal because he has an exceptional mother. Please don’t forget that in the midst of everything. You’re a great mom, Ella.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t a rebuttal of that statement, so I simply gave her hand a squeeze back.