My baby starts kindergarten in the fall, and I am a wreck.

Okay, it is not entirely accurate to call him a baby. The proper technical term for Sam is "big boy." He can do all the things that big boys do. He runs, jumps, dresses himself (sometimes), uses the potty on a more or less regular basis. He can count to 120, name the moons of Saturn, and argue like a trial lawyer. But this big boy still cries when he's tired, frustrated, or angry. He cuddles up next to me after a tough day, and falls asleep sometimes with his head on my lap, just like he used to when he was a baby. Is it not therefore valid to conclude that he is also still my baby? So how can he be ready to go off to school? It doesn't seem possible. Aren't there laws about sending babies off to school? There must be. Note to self: look up laws relating to babies and school.

This month the inexorable march to kindergarten begins with an orientation for future kindergartners and their parents. For two weeks I avert my eyes whenever I see the note written on the calendar. But the day has arrived, and there is no more denying it. As I fuss over my baby before his first trip to his new school for kindergarten orientation, he suddenly looks vertiginously tall to me. When did he get so tall? Doesn't he know that babies aren't supposed to be tall, or go off to kindergarten? Really. There are laws – I'm going to look them up any minute. I can't be too careful. Adulthood can sneak up on the unwary parent. Think of the stuffed animals left abandoned, the toy trains outgrown, the broken crayons ground into the rug like the shards of vanished civilizations. Send a baby off to kindergarten and the next thing you know he's in graduate school on another continent, where he'll never call, he'll never write, he'll never let me tuck him into bed. It all starts with kindergarten. Damn slippery slope. Where are those laws again?

But wait. Graduate school presupposes success in college, high school, elementary school. I'm making assumptions here. What if kindergarten orientation doesn't go well? There are so many factors to consider. He has to make a good impression. We have to make a good impression: me, my husband, our youngest toddling around in her big-girl boots. (Don't be getting all toddler on me now, baby girl – there are laws.) Are these khakis too casual? Should my husband be wearing a tie instead of a t-shirt? Should we be bringing the baby? I fear that I should have make-up, shoes with pointy toes, and a babysitter. Also my floors should be cleaner, and our diet should include more vegetables. The harsh light of kindergarten will expose all these flaws and more. There are expectations we are failing to meet, social norms that we're violating. There are laws. If only I'd looked them up when Sam was still a baby, we would have had a grip on it all by now.

But I didn't; we don't; and now my poor baby – YES HE IS STILL A BABY! – will be condemned to the life of an outcast because of our heedless ignorance, my wrinkled khakis, my husband's unfashionably faded jeans, our peculiar inability to get and keep a babysitter. It's too late for us to become well-versed in the laws of socially apt parenting. Kindergarten orientation is upon us! Look at the time! I'm stewing in my own maternal angst, when in 3.5 minutes we will be officially late for Sam's first school appointment. What are we doing with our lives, stumbling in late for kindergarten orientation? We'll never get another chance to make a first impression, and we're already on the verge of blowing it. We'll be The Late People. Where is Sam's hairbrush? Where is my hairbrush? Why doesn't the baby have enough hair to brush? We'll be The Late People With Intractable Hair Problems. The school secretaries won't like us. The teachers won't like us. The other parents won't like us. We'll end up ostracized, playdate-less, sitting on the wrong side of the Little League field in the wrong brand of aluminum chairs. The teachers will coolly assess our social failures, and sit Sam in the dustiest corners of the classroom, where the troublemakers and hopeless cases go. He'll be stuck with the dullest safety scissors, the dried-up markers, the clogged Elmer's glue. Here I am fiddling while his chances for academic success burn. Who told me that I was qualified to be a parent? I am the problem, not the solution. There ought to be a law about people like me.

I'm so brittle with anxiety that you can practically see little pieces of me breaking off and dropping to the floor. Sam asks for help pulling on his coat. That is when I spot the spots. "Is that yogurt on your shirt?" I yell. "Oh my God! You have yogurt on your shirt! We need to leave and You! Have! Yogurt! On your shirt!" What would happen if, God forbid, he went to his new elementary school for the first time in a yogurt-covered shirt? Would it not set in motion a chain of events leading inevitably to failure, delinquency, a lifetime spent bagging groceries? He submits patiently while I yank his yogurt-covered delinquent destiny off his shoulders and replace it with a clean slate – I mean, a clean shirt. I want him to start off right on the road to kindergarten. Especially since, at the rate we're going, we're not going to make it to kindergarten orientation until the middle of third grade.

Finally we are all dressed in relatively clean shirts, and those of us with hair have had it brushed as best we can. As I flail my arms in an animated (if futile) attempt to get everyone into the car in the shortest amount of time possible, my husband gently suggests that perhaps I should relax a little. It's only kindergarten orientation, after all.

I gasp. Hang on a minute. Have I, in my orientation angst, become some sort of stay-at-home stereotype? It's true. Here I am: the mother with not enough to occupy her mind, consumed with micromanaging every detail of her child's growing up. To fill the gaping holes in my own self-esteem, I will push my child to do more, faster, better. Every detail perfect! Every moment filled! Bereft of my own accomplishments, I am instead investing all my energy in my children. I am over-anxious, over-bearing, over-eager, desperate to engineer the ultimate kindergarten orientation triumphant. How will my child ever be able to become his own person, trapped in the shadow of my neurotic domination? I am condemning him to years of therapy. Perhaps it's better that I don't go at all. Yes, that's it. You all go to the orientation; I'll just sit here at home. Never mind me. I'll only get in the way.

My attempt to make a break for it fails. My husband gently guides me out the door and to the car, where the kids are buckled in and waiting, doe-eyed. Did I mention that we're late? I slide sheepishly into my seat and buckle my seat belt with a minimum of arm-flailing, while the kids watch. "You're the last one to be ready, Mama," Sam observes, an impish twinkle in his eyes. "Now are we going to be late because you weren't cooperating?"

My husband stifles a laugh. "We're not late," he says. "We'll be fine."

Easy for him to say. He's not the one who will be held responsible for knowing all the rituals and taboos of kindergarten society and its associated adults. Who expects fathers to know all those laws? Fathers get points just for showing up in their kids' lives. Double points if they're not on parole or in violation of a restraining order at the time. Harrumph. I squash myself lower into my seat and make a mental note to give my husband a lecture about the ignorance of male privilege. That will teach him, right?

Sam, seeing me sulk in the front seat, pipes up again. "Daddy, don't you think Mama was not cooperating? I don't think she should get a lollipop tonight."

My husband and I both stifle a laugh. I don't even like lollipops. "Mama is fine," he says calmly. "We're all fine."

I eye him sharply. What is this "fine" business he keeps mentioning? Are we not teetering on the edge of our future here, in the car, on the road to kindergarten orientation? Can't he feel the weight of our every action and decision pressing down upon our son, inexorably shaping his life to come? Does he not know the causal relationship between yogurt spots and delinquency?

My husband reaches over and squeezes my hand. "It will be fine," he says again. "We're already here."

And he's right. We are.