On this day one year ago, I was waiting for answers at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital. My son had been admitted in the darkest hour of dawn, after nearly nine hours in a room at the ER. The official reason was “acute kidney failure.” I didn’t read that in his paperwork until later. I’m glad.
I’d cried hard the day before -- the morning before? I lost track of time. I knew something wasn’t right, that Isaac's sinus infection wasn’t really a sinus infection. I was overwhelmed at the start of a new school year. I had three completely different preps, but my heart and mind were at home, worrying over my little boy. Still, once the doctor called and said he wanted to admit us, once we’d thrown our still-cooking pot of soup into the sink and tossed some toothbrushes and t-shirts and Isaac’s stuffed beagle into a backpack, the side of me that manages to remain remarkably clear in a real crisis kicked in. I didn’t freak out then because I had shit to do. I spent the next few days listening, processing, asking questions, and waiting -- so much waiting. By Saturday we were blessedly home again, tucked into our own beds. Exhausted, so grateful, but with our heads swimming. I still had classes to teach, and I’d missed the first few days of school. I was nowhere near finding my groove. Honestly, last year was so tough in a lot of ways, and sometimes I still wonder if things would have been different if I hadn’t felt so thrown at start. Probably not. But I still wonder.
I didn’t sit down to write about that, but when I thought about where we were a year ago, I just thought, we are so lucky, right here, in this moment. I’m thankful for all of it: my children’s ordinary bickering, their whining for a snack, for dinner that doesn’t come fast enough. For the ordinary exhaustion of these first days of school, uncomplicated by the visceral fear that took hold of my stomach, of my breath, last Labor Day weekend.
What I sat down to write was this: the Winslow Girls have survived their first full week of school! And Isaac starts kindergarten on Tuesday, with the same teacher Suzannah had. We love her, and when she called to tell us that Isaac would be in her class, I literally did a little dance right there in my kitchen. I mean, it’s all pretty ordinary stuff, really. Cycles of our life, every September, because I now have school-aged children and because I am a teacher. This is my fifteenth year in the classroom and I am well aware of the rhythms of fall. It’s not new, except that it is, every year. New people and a new normal mixed with deep nostalgia for the kids who are no longer in my class but who stop in for a hug anyway. And this year my job has changed in a pretty exciting way; I’m still teaching, but I’m trying something a little different and taking on new responsibilities. I’m passionate about the program I’m coordinating, I care about doing well, I’m stepping into shoes I’m going to have to work really hard to fill, and I’m terrified of fucking it up. (This is true of so many things, really. Teaching. Parenthood. My eternal prayer for everything seems to be, “Please, God, don’t let me royally eff this up.”)
I’ve been back at school every day since August 10, which has been good. I’ve had a lot to do and a lot to process, and in some ways I feel like I’m just barely getting started, but then again, my head and my heart are pretty fully in the game right now. I was able to ease in slowly. Suzannah and Isaac spent an awful lot of time there with me during the past few weeks, playing with my principal’s daughters and reading and coloring and accepting little gifts of chocolate and chips and toys from my friends and colleagues when I was off planning and organizing and trying to figure out my new role this year. Right now I’m so thankful that they were such good sports, and that my colleagues were so kind to them when they were stuck there with me.
I know Suzannah is glad to be back at school, and she seems to be having a fabulous time so far. This is the first year she has moved up a grade with her entire class -- while I’m not convinced that’s always a good thing (kids who are too comfortable with each other can be a challenge), in this case, I think it’s a positive for her. She’s also in a 4th/5th grade class, and I know she’ll be challenged. I also know she’s absolutely up for it. I had very little anxiety over her starting school this year, which left me free to focus on my own. I’m happy to report, though, that I have had a pretty great week myself. My sophomores are wonderful, spirited and cheerful and lovable and ridiculous in the best of ways. My IB juniors were a little too quiet today, but I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt; I had them last, on a Friday afternoon. Next week we’ll all be a little more clear-headed, and maybe my crazy cheerleading will help them find their pulses. I remain relentlessly optimistic.
Anyway, Suzannah has got it down, this school thing. I would love to believe that she’s like me, because isn’t it natural to see in our daughters our most idealized versions of ourselves? And in some ways, maybe she is. She wakes before the rest of us, every morning -- when I get up I tiptoe past her room and she is always cross-legged on her bed, reading a book. She is ferociously organized. She loves school. She wants to be a teacher. On the other hand, she is less engaged in girlhood drama than I was at her age. Her best friends are boys, and she spends at least some of her recess time drawing comic books with them. How spectacularly nerdy is that? I couldn’t be more proud. She also loves math more than any other subject at school, and honestly, her skills probably surpass mine. Whether this is because she’s naturally more inclined towards math or because back in the nineties I bought into the idea that girls were supposed to think math is hard, I don’t know (although I have always been a naturally linguistic learner). I do know that I don’t care at all that my daughter is learning math differently than I did and I wish everyone who learned math fifteen or twenty or thirty or forty years ago would calm down about that, my word. I care that she loves learning. Period. I care that she feels like she can do math. I care that she is confident. I care that she is kind.
And Isaac, oh, my little son, who screams gleefully that he’s going to stink his armpit on me before zerberting my belly, who still vaults into my arms and slobbers on my cheek. I will lift him up for him to wrap his skinny legs and knobby knees around my waist as long as I have the strength. Today was his very last day of daycare. I have been in such denial about this, but it was hard, and I will tell you right now that I tried not to cry when I picked him up but was spectacularly unsuccessful, because we have had the same wonderful woman and her daughters in our lives since Suzannah was a baby. For nine years I have been able to continue to do the work I am called to do on this earth and still know that my children are loved and nurtured. My children have made friends and learned and played, and I have felt like I have a community helping me to do this important work of raising my children. We simply were not meant to do this in isolation. I try to cheer myself with the thought that I will no longer be giving up such a hunk of my paycheck every month, but the truth is that they were worth so much more than we could give them. And so I drove home with my son today, and he held his “graduation” trophy in his lap, and tears poured down my face the entire time. Motherhood is like this: I love everything my children have before them. I’ve said this so many times, but watching them grow is the greatest joy of my life. But leaving behind the stages of their babyhood, toddlerhood, and preschool -- it aches a bit. I wouldn’t wish them backwards, because their growing is so beautiful, but still. The stretches, pulls, tugs, and breaks -- they ache. And what a privilege to feel it all. I never want to forget this: that the very ache itself is a gift.
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