Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Back To School

We here in Seattle are rugged individualists. We do not start school the day after Labor Day. No sir, we start two days after Labor Day. I secretly believe it is to give the parents an extra day to recover from attending Bumbershoot. Maybe it's to give everyone a chance to get back from their last ditch camping trip of the summer. Or maybe it's to give us this spare day between holiday and routine to speculate and ruminate and drive each other crazy.

My jBird has proclaimed herself the "luckiest girl in the world" because she gets a locker in her new school, because her mom bought her the tackiest shirt on Earth to wear for back to school because it was deemed "cool" by that fascinating eight-year-old rubric, and because she gets to ride the bus this year. The Hooligan is more quiet about his inner-workings, preferring instead to give involved descriptions of space machinery. But today he told me that "School is awesome because there are so many possibilities." They are ready to go. They've been counting down the days for a month now. Tomorrow is the day. Today is the day they will eat popcorn for breakfast and watch too much TV and wrestle with each other in great, giggling, tumbling chaos that spills into every room of the house and out in the yard. Today they will get on each other's nerves and holler and then hug. Today is summer. Tomorrow is not.

Tomorrow they will go and learn the geography of a new school. The odd chemistry of making new friends. The arithmetic of when to sit quietly, when to stand in line, when to run and play. The poetry of being on their own amid a crowd of friendly strangers. Tomorrow when they dress it will be for school. When they eat breakfast it will be with an eye toward getting them through the day. When they step out the door, it will be into the unknown. Tomorrow they are going back to school.

Tomorrow I am going back to school, too. I will have to learn the silences of my house. I will have to regain the trust that the things they've learned that are far more important than reading and writing will stick with them as they navigate their days. I will have to resign myself again to giving them away to others for what is the best part of their days. That I will only see them sleepy in the mornings, worn out in the afternoons, and recharging on the weekends for the next several months. I will have to remind myself that this is for a greater cause. I will have to remember how to go about my days without stepping on midday Legos, stopping to make lunch for three, listening to the non-stop narration of two little lives. I will re-learn how to paint by myself, write by myself, eat by myself, clean by myself, shop by myself, even go to the bathroom by myself without the inevitable urgent conversation through the door. I have a lot to learn.

I am glad to learn it, though. These small people given to my charge are ready, so ready, for this next step. Their little wings are wet with newness, their fawn legs are wobbly but strong. They are thrilled with learning, with stepping out, with independence, with challenge and with the chaos of all those new people to meet. They gobble with their senses and absorb new knowledge as if through their skin. Who would I be if I were to deny them that? If I kept them babies in my nest and squashed their first attempts at flight with my feathered, motherly ass? I talk big. I'm all bravery and centered and selfless in my speech. I'm terrified. I always am. I resolutely do not think of the worst possibilities and smile brightly and say "It will be so much fun!" And indeed, it will. For all of us. I crave a quiet cup of coffee, uninterrupted time to think. And yet I quake inside. Have I done enough to prepare them? Will they be all right?

Of course they will. It is they who have taught my wobbling fawn legs how to walk like a mother. It is they who have helped to unfurl the wings of my heart to soar higher than I ever thought imaginable. It is they who have prepared me for this. This incremental letting go. This watching two distinct people who carry a little bit of me in their DNA to walk around, to succeed, to go further bit by bit away. It is they who have taught me that I have no control, only love and fragments of my own experience to share with them. They will be fine. I will be fine. Tomorrow, school starts for all of us.

Today I will watch them play and enjoy this spare day.

23 comments:

  1. I love this piece. Having been back at work with kids for about already three weeks now, I have put aside that first day jittery thing - we are old pros at school now. Was there ever a summer vacation?
    That incremental letting go is tough business. Hold on to the notion that your control is limited - the older they get, the more that is true. Harder and harder to adjust to that until, one year when you discover you have done that. They are launched and their life is their own now. Sail on!

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    1. Thanks, Gracie. I look forward to the jitters subsiding for all of us as I know they will. As for the control vs. letting go, I've been slowly letting them go since they were born. What else can we do?

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  2. Beautiful. May you all enjoy the return to school in the coming months.

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  3. I'm so glad my kids are only one and two. I'm not sure I have the strength yet to let them go. Thank goodness for tacky shirts to help us focus on something other than the fear when it's time, though, eh? Happy thoughts from me to you tomorrow.

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    1. I think by the time yours are ready to go, you will have found the strength. Or enough, anyway, to get them out the door before you collapse. :)

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  4. Oh, I really feel guilty now about the unbridled excitement of my kids going back to school. No downside emotionally for me whatsoever. Just outright glee.

    I am such a bad mum.

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    1. Not at all, silly. I have a good bit of glee mixed in there, too. I'm mostly having a hard time this year because my baby is starting Kindergarten and both of them are starting at a brand new school.

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  5. This brought tears to my eyes. How do we do it? We never might, if we didn't have to. I hope your birds had a good day. I admire you for putting your pride aside and buying the tacky shirt. Damn the tacky shirts. You should send this out somewhere.

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    1. Like pulling off a band-aid. I just close my eyes and rip. Really I do. Well, that and buy tacky shirts.

      Where would I send such a thing?

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  6. I hate the start of school! It's like a little heartbreak to my Mom heart. It's a pair of shoes that I know look great, but pinch a little when I wear them. I'm sure they will stretch out a little, enough to be comfortable, but it's the first wearing of them that hurts the most. That is the first day of school for me....

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    1. This is such an apt analogy. I also think it's justification for me to buy a new pair of shoes for myself at the beginning of each school year. So I can remind myself they will wear in and I will love them.

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  7. Reading your posts is like taking a bubble bath! It is so relaxing and so comforting!

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    1. Judy, you put it so well. I'd like to sit all day in TL's words and let my fingers get all wrinkled while I soak.

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  8. There is something about this sending them off–this gradual unwinding of a skein that unravels leaving them further off at the end as time goes on. By the time I sent my eldest to high school this year, I felt like I had let loose a kite which I could barely see, rocking off in the distance. I could miss feeling so close to them if I wasn't so delighted to catch sight of their distant fluttering.

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    1. Tara - wait til that child goes to college....

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    2. That's such a beautiful image, Tara. I will hold that in my mind.

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  9. What a beautiful post. I loved that you also are going back to school and relearning. We have had an odd week here, with our first week of homeschooling. A post is not far off!

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  10. You write so eloquently about one of the more tangled messes of parenthood--how close to hold them, how to let them go with driving yourself 'round some bend from which you may never return.

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    1. I may be a few bends past "No Return" but thank you, MM. Now that yours are much older, do you have any sage advice for accomplishing this?

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  11. I am more than a little glad I didn't read this post earlier. Although there was a little heart reaching as my youngest went off to school for the first time on Monday! That was far out weighed by the pride I felt as she pushed me out of the door to the classroom and said 'see ya later!' I never worried for a moment that she wouldn't be ready as she ha s been in nursery since she was 9 months old, the curse of a working mother!

    Your post made me glimpse for a moment the things I may have missed in these years before school, the different rhythm our family may have had. There is no learning how to do things alone just the learning of a new routine to the daily shuffle of people and this makes me a little sad. I think if I had read your post before she started the chance of parental blubbering would have been far greater!

    Hoping your birds are all settled now and your lessons are going smoothly too ;-)

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