First Day of School

"Are you ready to start school?” everyone asked Elias on the days leading up to the start-- and he'd shake his head and say: No.

Yet he woke easily on Tuesday morning, put on a blue collar button-down shirt, and as I helped with the buttons, said, "I think everyone will like this shirt, do you? Mom, do you think everyone will like this shirt?"

"I do."

Olive, still asleep on her top bunk, had laid out a new black dress the previous evening and Elias touched it and said, "Do you think everyone will like Olive's dress?"

"Yes, I think so Bud."

It took a number of back rubs and nudges for Olive to shake sleep's grasp and join us in the trailer, Olive doesn’t rise as easily as Elias, who usually starts firing off questions before I've downed enough coffee to comprehend them, let alone come up with an answer before the next question makes its way through the fog of my morning brain. I'm a lot like my daughter in the morning.

Nick cooked up some sausage, warmed up leftover frittata for us, made a one-eyed Jack for Olive and an egg taco for Elias, our own bright-eyed short-order cook on the first day of school. Nick is more like Elias in the morning.

On the drive down Lowell Point Road, a dirt road full of potholes from days of heavy rain, I took my first sip of coffee from my travel mug, only to spill most of it down my chest and into my lap because I'd failed to put the lid on properly. This of course made Elias laugh, along with me, as we weaved and bobbed around and over the holes that have grown harder to avoid each day. 

They multiply with with each rainy day, as the sky seems to be opening and pouring her heart upon us.

Or as Olive said the other day: “There are a whole lot of cows up there in the sky peeing on stones."

But not on Tuesday. Not on the first day of school.

On the first day of school we woke to blue skies and sunshine, a slight reprieve, before the next low pressure arrives thats forecasted to bring another ten days of rain. 

Another ten days of cows peeing on stones.

We pulled up to Elias’s school with a minute to spare before the first bell. ”Is it OK if we walk you in today?" I asked Elias, my 7th grader who remains uninhibited, his body going through puberty but without the feelings of shame that haunt so many teenagers, not yet embarrassed by his parents, coffee stains and all.

I snuck a pair of shoes in with us, expensive ones Nick bought at REI, altering the laces to pull ties, shoes Elias refuses to wear. I brought them with hopes his teacher, and her magical assistants, will have better luck than us convincing him that change comes in all forms--pimples appear on noses, sweat glands go into overdrive, feet stink as they grow, families move from a house to a cabin to a trailer, and sometimes you need to throw away the torn up shoes for a new pair.

The last time he wore them, at Adam's Camp, when the therapists pretended they couldn't find his other shoes, he cried and lashed out on the volleyball court. He wore them for two hours before they “found” his boots.

"You may want to ease into these," I told his teacher, who last Spring, in a matter of days, taught Elias how to put on his own socks after I had given up on his acquisition of this daily life skill. 

Magic I tell ya. Or patience amplified. Or genius.

Or not Mom.

All I know is this Mom is pretty darn excited for school to start again, especially for Elias, with his same phenomenal teacher and all her voodoo ways, because sometimes "not Mom" is exactly what our children need.  

And I could sure use a few hours without hearing that three letter word with a request attached.

We dropped Olive off next, and despite a little tremble when she found her seat-- not a round table like the rest of the kids, but a stool at a counter with one boy she didn’t seem to know--she made the transition between 1st and 2nd grade teachers with ease. 

It was a nice change from last year, when she was the “new kid", to walk in with her backpack of supplies and hear multiple children say: "Hi Olive!"

"Mom, I want to take this off." She pointed to her notebooks where she had written Olivia over Olive with a sharpie on a piece of duct tape. I smiled and helped her pull off the silver tape, happy that she is sticking to the name we chose for her, even if we gave her Olivia as her legal name, she will always be our Olive.

After hugs goodbye, Nick and I walked out of the building  and put our sunglasses back on—perhaps our easiest first day of school yet.

I dropped Nick off at work and returned home, where I walked through the woods to the beach as my dogs chased each other around the sand flats, I wrote in my journal and read a chapter of my long neglected book, walked back up the cliffside trail, dug my hands in the dirt, pulling clumps of grass from the garden, as I soaked in the colors of lilies, dahlias, and nasturtiums in the finally warm sun. 

Summer seemed to arrived on the first day of school and I wasn't walking down the hallways as a counselor helping children adjust. I remained free, outside, dirty, sweating, refueling my cracked cup.

At the end of the day, Elias walked right past me, like he once did ten years ago after a few weeks in preschool, with a huge smile on his face, excited to ride the bus. 

The "short bus" I once feared, only its not short and I would have been more worried now if he rode the regular bus with all those typical kids. Instead he has an aide for him and four other students and will ride to the edge of town where a respite worker will meet him for the afternoon or I will greet him as the bus doors sigh open and drive him back down our potholed road.

Olive also walked out her school doors with a smile. "Mom, tomorrow we will get to hold the pet snake!"

"Wow! Did you have a good day?"

"Yes, I like my teacher."

"And how was the seat."

"OK, except its high up and my pants are slippery so I kept slipping down." Nothing about feeling ostracized, just those darn slippery pants.

The cows held their bladders for the rest of the afternoon and well into the night.

Only one hundred and seventy nine more days like this, please. 

The seasons can change, as they always do, but may my children enter easily and leave their classrooms with a smile.

Is that too much to ask?

Comments

[Valerie Demming]

Nope. Not too much to ask. 😊

[Christy]

Alright then I will keep asking/hoping for smiles at the end of the day:)