Back to School Blues

The second day of school was rainy in the morning.  Fitting for the gloomy mom.  It was the first full day of school, and the first day of the bus.

Waiting anxiously

Our neighbor expresses his political views (and Noah gets on the bus)

Before the bus came, I think that sending Noah off to school was just a concept for me.  It wasn't really happening.  At least not any time soon.  Then it really happened.  And it was so much harder than I imagined.  But we don't have to get into that.  Instead we can talk about the small moments that I tried to memorize for him.  I have a terrible memory, but on important days, I try really, really hard.  Better write it down before it's gone.

On September 1st the entire family was together, all of us scrambling around the house earlier that any of us has scrambled in weeks, and all of the scrambling was focused on him.  Magda and I were in our pajamas, and she is still so small that she can barely smile or hold her head up properly.  Greta was eating her second bowl of cereal because the first on had gotten soggy before she could finish it, and the sister will not eat soggy cereal.  Kevin was drinking coffee and wearing his glasses, which he only sometimes does.  Like Noah.  He packed Noah's lunch: a roast beef sandwich, an apple, pretzel sticks, an apple juice box and a special dessert.  The first day of school was a hot day.  Really, really hot.  The kindergartner played in the pool in the yard with Greta when he came home bursting with information about how to cross the street in front of the bus and what voice levels are OK to use under varying circumstances.  Greta missed him so much when he left.  She tried to bribe me into letting her go to kindergarten too.  If I eat all my supper?  If I clean up my room?  If I remember my shoes? The second day of school Noah wore his purple Vikings jersey.  The one that used to be Kevin's when he was a kid and that Noah would wear every single day if he were allowed to and that I sometimes hide in a corner of my closet just to keep him from wearing it every single day.  There were a few small crises.  In the moments before the bus was due to arrive, we couldn't find Noah's left shoe.  We found it.  Then he had to go to the bathroom.  Like, number two.  He made it.  When he got off the bus in the afternoon, he had no backpack, which was disappointing only because of the art project inside that he was dying to show us.  A hand print with a heart sticker in the middle entitled, The Kissing Hand.  We got it back later in the afternoon from another elementary school in town where he had to stop in the afternoon to transfer buses.  Greta and I made this sign for Noah to see when he got off the bus.

He came home in an explosion of new songs and games, but could remember the name of only one kid - the other Noah in the grade above his.  He couldn't tell Kevin about his day when he came home from work because he'd already told me, and it would be just too much work to recount everything a second time.  Only, he didn't really tell me anything about his day because all he could remember was the excitement of the bus ride.

There is a moment that I would probably remember even without writing it down.  It was a defining moment for me as a mother, because it reminded me so much of my own mom.

Mom /mɒm/

noun informal

1. Woman who stays up very, very late at night doing remarkable things for her children because she loves them so much that sometimes it fills her with an anxious energy that makes it impossible to sleep.

Most of the time I feel like just a girl living with some kids.  I'm supposed to be trying to nurture them and teach them and fill their brains with creative brilliance, but mostly I'm trying to figure out what to make them for lunch and to not yell at them or get too frustrated with their unending boundary-testing.  Some moments, though, I feel like a real mom.  Like the night before Noah's second day of school when I could have gone to bed with the baby two hours earlier, but instead I stayed up waiting for pumpkin bread to bake.  Because it is Noah's favorite, and I needed him to have it for his lunch in his brand new Star Wars lunch box.  That was a good night.

Good night.