In the fall of 2006 I put my two oldest kids in school-school for the first time, after four years of homeschooling. Off they went to the neighborhood elementary school, a small brick building a half-mile from our house. For fourteen years now I've had a kid at Neighborhood Elementary.
This morning Stella and I drove down together to drop off the books she brought home in March and to pick up the items she left in the classroom. As instructed, we made a sign with her name on it to hold up to the driver's side window, so they could retrieve the right bag. After a brief exchange with the person who works at the front desk, we drove away.
I haven't been a very involved school mom. I volunteered in the classroom occasionally, but I never joined the PTO. In the parallel universe where there is no COVID-19 pandemic I would probably have been a little grumpy about the fifth-grade awards night, thinking to myself, "Seriously, people, we don't have to get all Sunrise, Sunset about the end of fifth grade." So I was surprised to find myself a little teary as we pulled out of the parking lot for the last time.
It seemed like such a huge change to send our kids there. And it was, I guess. Nobody was making them memorize The Raven at Neighborhood Elementary (seriously, Past Jamie, you were kind of a nut); there was a heavier emphasis on team sports and finishing all of the math problems on the worksheet.
I guess any institution that's woven into your daily life for fourteen years is going to leave a space when it goes away. When we first became a Neighborhood Elementary family I was 36 and my oldest was 9. He raised his hand after the first test was returned and asked, "Can you tell me what the mean was?" The teacher told me about about this episode in hushed tones, saying, "Of course I told him we don't talk about that in this classroom." At the time I felt like such an outsider. Was there a social code in play here that I had failed to learn? In hindsight it seems more likely that she was not accustomed to being asked about mean scores.
As the years went by I felt less uncertain. I am thinking about the teachers who got my kids, who presided over classrooms where they could thrive. I am thinking about the occasional teachers for whom thriving seemed to be a lower priority than complying. I am thinking about the teachers with staying power, who have known all five of my kids whether or not they taught them. And I am also thinking about the day that Stella and I saw a surprise heron in the creek that runs past the school. Maybe the heron is a good reminder for today: life is full of unexpected loveliness, and every variety of temporal goodness comes to an end.
The girl who did not yet exist when we first sent kids to school is 11 now, and I will turn 50 this summer. It's always true, I suppose, that you don't know what lies ahead when you send kids off to a new place. But I've never felt it quite as keenly as I do this year.
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