Happy Birthday Bridget! You are three and wonderful.

I wrote the following note three weeks ago, on Bridget's first day of playschool. It was posted to Facebook, and I meant to re-post it here right away, but you know how these things go.

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Today was a perfect day for a migraine. Katie woke up at 7 with a blinding headache, so I stayed home from work. The source? Probably her ever-mounting pile of schoolwork had something to do with it, but mostly it was because of the part of the day lasting from 9:15 to 11:45, Friday mornings, from now until spring 2010: Bridget’s playschool.

Today was her first day.

I hadn’t given it all that much thought, to be honest, because I knew from the beginning that I’d be working. But now that I was going to be the one to take her, the feelings that spent all night brewing a thunderstorm in Katie’s head hit me, too: the anxiety, the excitement, the helplessness. We’ve never had a babysitter that wasn’t a direct blood relative—now we had to leave our ultra-shy toddler with a bunch of goddamn strangers?

Actually, the playschool we’re part of is wonderful. We knew that much going in. It’s a co-op, and its ethos is built around setting up children for success being on their own, interacting with kids they don’t know. Discipline is firm but gentle. The kids have a snack in the middle and talk about what foods they like. The teachers are good. Calm.

Their philosophy also means that parents are encouraged to stick around for as much of the day as they feel they need to—for a kid like Bridget, this is critical. So after a headache-diluting coffee, Katie and I both came with her for this first day. Katie made it just long enough to see Bridget and the others start to play on the playground; I stuck around for that, the outdoor-indoor shoe swap, show-and-tell on the carpet, and snack time.

Bridget had some definite nerves at first. She was terrified of going to a park bench to take attendance, because she didn’t want to say “Here I am!” when her name was called out. She wanted me to squirt the soap on her hands before washing them, not this week’s helper mom.

Still, I was confident that she’d make it—and then came snack time. She ended up sitting at the table with a kid on either side of her, and me standing behind her. Sometimes this will send her into constant shoulder checking mode, but today her people-watching instinct took over. Our teacher started a conversation about food, and what everyone was eating, until one of the older kids started rocking in his chair.

“River,” the teacher said, “you shouldn’t move your chair like that, because last year someone accidentally had their chair land on someone’s toe.”

Frankly, at this point I was barely registering the conversation because there was no chance Bridget was going to take any part in it—this is a kid who, when another kid says hello to her, turns her head full away and smiles to herself privately. Even the more obviously social kids weren’t saying much at this point.

But who should speak up after the teacher says this but my very own daughter, chiming in with, “Or! You could just stand up.”

The teacher and River both turn to her. “Good idea, Bridget,” she says. “And what are you eating for snack today?”

“Oranges,” she says with a big grin and a nod.

I could have fainted. A week ago Katie and I had a panicked discussion about whether or not Bridget would ever reach out in a whole year of playschool, and how embarrassed we ought to feel if her separation anxiety made us withdraw her from the program altogether.

Now it seemed like a new day. Bridget got up and let the helper mom put the soap on her hands. She went over to the playhouse and sat down at a table where two other kids were playing with the same teacher from snack time. I told Bridget I was leaving, and she didn’t look back. (I know this, because I did.)

I met Katie at the coffee shop and when it was over, we both sat on the benches outside her classroom with the same mix of excitement and freaked-out-ness. If Bridget had suddenly gotten scared, would the teachers have called us right away? Or what if they tried to calm her down, and it didn’t work? I realized somewhere in this process that the contact number we gave the school was our landline back at home—and we’d been sitting in Second Cup for the past hour.

Then the door opened, and Bridget coyly walked over, smiling. She had a great time. It turns out she stuck right by the teacher’s side, which is what we wanted: an adult anchor. Let her bond with the kids another week.

Oh no, the teacher said with a wink. That’s not all. At one point, Bridget decided to read a story (read: look at pictures and make up a completely different story) to her and some of the other kids. It was about two rabbits who go looking for a carrot together.

In the car ride home, Bridget told us they also listened to “Baby Beluga” on the CD player, and that she sang along.

Usually when she says things like that, we just chalk it up to her buzzing imagination.

Now I’m not so sure.