Today I cleaned out the shelf I had put aside for school stuff during the pandemic and returned it to what it was in The Before Times - a shelf for cookbooks. There were a whole lot of memories there, few of them good. I threw away several garbage bags of stuff - papers, broken crayons, many used school books for both kids - only to have them come home with all of the supplies and papers from school for the last eight weeks. I also threw away all of Bobby’s violin stuff. I still get very emotional when I think about Bobby and violin and other than keeping the instrument because it’s not something I can throw away, I really don’t want any reminder of it anywhere near me. I just can’t deal.
I found myself getting very choked up today at the prospect of the kids finishing out first and third grade and am struggling to put my finger on exactly why. I mean, sure, it’s the end of the craziest school year we’ll (hopefully!) experience. It’s normal to feel some type of way about it. But my sudden inexplicable sadness is really about something else. I feel oddly betrayed - like that the kids’ school is a co-parent of sorts, and it went away with no notice a year and three months ago, and I suffered, and then it came back in a blaze of glory, and now it’s gone again. I feel strangely untethered and alone.
Did I mention I have major abandonment issues from my childhood?
I think for me there’s a great comfort to knowing there are trained professionals in your child’s life helping to mold and teach them, that the entire job of teaching your child about the world and how to be in the world is not entirely on your shoulders. School is such an important element of society. As much as I hated getting up in the morning, I also enjoyed the ritual of it all - the packing of backpacks and picking up of kids in the afternoon. The routines. All of that is going away for nine weeks and I’m pretty freaked out. We’re back to chaos, with the added element of trying to throw my event together in (now, less than) three months. Even though I know I’ll literally blink and these kids will be back in school again - and somewhat normal school, with full days and full classrooms. It will be August in seconds. And it won’t be like last year where I’ll be preparing the house for a year of at-home learning.
But, gosh, it’s been such an insane time, and here we are at the end of it, and I feel overwhelmed by the weight of all that. I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to breathe and feel the feelings. It’s a big moment, to be sure.
Here is their first day of school picture from last August. How different things were, how little we knew about what was going to happen. We were still saddled with fucking Trump, for chrissakes, and had no way of predicting if we’d be free of him or not. I was planning my virtual event. I hadn’t even been to the desert yet. It hasn’t even been a full year and yet it feels like 10,000 years ago. I wonder how August will feel from now? Or next June??
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