The First Day

Some mothers can't wait for school to start in the fall.  I dread it.

I try to manage my anxiety, stress, and dread to the point that I'm in denial.  This year, I decided at the end of the day, I am just going to go ahead and accept that I hate that first day back.

This year, I have more children in public school than I have ever had before.  For each stressful aspect of the first day of school, take that and multiply it by five, and you'll be able to imagine where I am at.

There's the practical aspect of getting ready for it.  Does everyone have shoes?  Enough clothes?  A backpack?  Even though I am careful to purchase clothing for my children on clearance year-round, the financial outlay at the beginning of school is high.  You can think that you have picked up plenty of every kind of supply that there could possibly be, but when those lists from each classroom come out, there are always surprises.  That one-and-a-half-inch binder you have?  It's not going to work.  It has to be a two-inch binder.  And white.

Regular folders?  A child who comes only up to your belly button will laugh you to scorn.  It has to be a fourteen-inch-wrap-around-twelve-pocket-foldover-with-removable-pencil-box-opens-cans-super-duper-fifty-dollar folder.  Green.

And something about buying my little boy a flash drive blows my mind.  To date, I, some forty years older than he is, have never yet owned a flash drive.

There's the emotional aspect.  Thank heavens all of my children got the teachers I was praying they would get.  Still, there are emotion-filled stories about what the teachers said they would have to do and who else is on the class list.  The bully isn't there, you show your daughter.  "Oh, but this kid," she says, pointing to the list, "is just as bad."  Just as bad--even though you never heard his name before and the bully's name came up daily.

Trying to get your easily distracted child to glance in the direction of his teacher at the meet-and-greet was going to take a full-fledged intervention. Forget him actually making eye contact with her or saying hello.

It's bad enough to separate from your children and wonder all day how they are faring.  The stories at the end of that first day drain every ounce of emotional energy you may have stored up.  "Emma's in my first three classes, but I don't get to have lunch with her.  Kate ate lunch with me, but she's the only person I know who has my lunch, and she was looking over her shoulder the whole time for her real friends.  I only have one class with Olivia, but it's PE, so it's not like we'll get to talk much.  Oliver is in first and fourth, but I have to actually sit by him in fourth, and that teacher said that we are stuck for the whole year.  I heard about this teacher--he's a nightmare."

Are you times-ing this by five?

There's the worrying.  Is so-and-so going to listen to his teacher?  Are the boys going to hold hands crossing the street?  

Then there are the homework rules.  Imagine five semi-traumatized children telling you in a half-hour span all the things their teachers said about how they will have to do their homework.  Looks like I might as well throw a going-away party for my computer. It doesn't sound like I will get to touch it again until June. Listening to them, I feel this little mouse in me roar up into the size of a lion.  "How dare they assume you can use my computer for all your homework?" I want to ask.  "What do you mean, Mr. Intransigent is only going to post your math homework online?"  But, none of this is the children's fault, so I do my best to keep my thoughts and words in.

I do, however, fantasize exploding in emails.

And all the paperwork.  All those "open disclosure" forms written front and back in 8-point font for me to read and sign, whether or not I agree with them!  All those "Tell Me about Your Child" sheets!  My sister pooh-poohs my distress.  "I just copy them without the child's name and then fill it in later," she says.  As all my children are not identical, though (and neither are their teacher's forms), that's not going to work for me.  I do my best to fill them out.  What is so-and-so's favorite movie?  What color is somebody-else saying is his favorite this week?  But why does the teacher need to know which bedroom window is theirs, and why are there questions about whether I feed them breakfast or provide ample supervision after school?  Don't they trust me to handle my time with my children adequately, just as I trust them to handle the in-school hours?  How do they think they got tall and strong enough to come to their school in the first place?

When I've thought the main after-school furor has ended, then all the afterthought comments start, and continue at the rate of one per 2.8 minutes: "Ms. Nguyen says she needs you to send her your email address."  "Ms. Music says we should really think about buying my own violin."  "Sarah said I should try out for her club." 

This year was particularly bad.  Not only was I supposed to be dealing with all of these children's raw emotions and insecurities, I had enough of my own.  I'd made the mistake of scheduling my own test-of-my-life and starting to study for it.  While trying to go over some sample questions for my test, I was interrupted ten times in ten minutes.  I put my books away, thinking, "It was their first day of school, and they need me."  I went out into the living room to read the newspaper and just BE THERE for them.

No one came into the room.  No one.

Twenty minutes later, I went back to my books.  The interruptions resumed immediately.

My kids' teachers are the bosses of them, but, somehow, I feel bossed around, too, by their rules and expectations.  Times five.

By bedtime, I was in a cold sweat, trying not to retort, "I don't care!" to everything they said.  I faintly remembered through all this how I used to regurgitate every detail of my life to my patient mother, and she had more children than I have.  I will never know how she did it.  I was tempted to lock myself away, and probably should have.

I finally got them all to bed and slogged around the house through my piles of guilt.  Once the house was quiet, I remembered how I had thought the afternoon would go.  Lots of listening and hugs, reassurances and good advice, complete with the smell of fresh-baked cookies in the air.

Yeah, right.  That would be the afternoon they spent with the mom they don't have.

I guess I've got more studying to do than I thought.  It is, after all, just the first day.