“It’s almost time to go back to school!” a fellow mom announced this week, with unrestrained glee.
My stomach clenched. I felt a bit frantic and overwhelmed, until I realized: I’m not the one going back to school. Why is my brow furrowed and my stomach knotted?
“I’m not ready!” I wanted to scream, at no one in particular.
All those blank summer pages on the calendar looked so clean, so free!
Organizing a family with two elementary school-age kids during the academic school year is a tightrope act. One tiny little misstep and the whole production goes down in flames.
Didn’t we just tackle the struggles of first and third grade? Didn’t we just struggle to get to baseball and lacrosse practices on the same night and attend the parent meetings? Didn’t we just leave work to make it to the 3:30 p.m. teacher conferences?
End-of-summer guilt is also seeping in.
We’re well into those “toting around” years — I understand they last until your kid is 16 and licensed — the ones when you spend most of your waking hours hauling the kids to and from something, or negotiating with your spouse and other parents amazing ways to get kid No. 1 to the spring concert and kid No. 2 to scouts. Those blank summer pages on the calendar looked so clean, so free! Now they will be filled with activities and due dates for applications for after-school clubs and volunteering for the fall festival or book fair.
Do I have the energy to do it all again? End-of-summer guilt is also seeping in. There’s the guilt of not lording over the kids’ reading lists and the failure to download those smart math apps. I also know I didn’t schedule all the playdates I promised with their ever-drifting friends or plan trips to museums.
Oh, I had big plans. Big!
But a surprise move, a family death, a new job — life got in the way of living. And suddenly, an unstructured summer, not quite the Tom Sawyer kind, but one where the unplanned was the plan, had taken over. Plus, summer vacation is now only about 45 minutes long, I swear.
The back-to-school blues, though, is really about something else. Coinciding with the end of a season, the start of school signals a change in a different kind of season — the passage of time in your family’s life and in your own. The children have lost yet another ounce of baby fat, learned yet another tween expression, and are one step closer to moving on with their own lives.
Conflicting parental reactions seize hold: Grow up! No, please stay little!
Going back to school isn’t going back at all, is it? That first day in the classroom is a forward motion, a sign of your kids moving along. It’s another throw-down from the universe: Keep up!
And it’s a necessary heart-wrenching transition of the highest order.
Join the Discussion
Comments are currently closed.