A thoughtful flashback to school days
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- August 20, 2023
- 1458
I first saw the packs of crayons and folders trotted out somewhere near the end of July, hot summer weather still soaking into my tanned skin. Fresh sticks of burnt umber, scarlet and cornflower nestled deep in their boxes, awaiting hands to press them onto crisp white sheets of paper. Their meaning didn’t sink in, as I walked past the aisles that weren’t as busy as they would be in the coming weeks. Last week as I browsed leisurely past those same aisles, it was a sea of humanity with endless lists, little hands selecting just the right color of notebook.
Now I have grandkids close by, and that rush of back to school will be semi-adjacent to my life once again. This summer our eldest grandson turned 3, and very soon that will mean preschool and elementary. My head is spinning as I think back to sending my last kid off to college nine years ago. It was a short hop in time that I wasn’t attached to anything school-wise.
I reminisce lightly of back-to-school shopping trips, all-day affairs that ended with filled backpacks and new kicks gleaming in shoeboxes. I don’t miss the endless lists of college-ruled paper and calculators that cost $79 unless you got the cheaper version, which “Can’t get the job done, Mom!” My heart sends a pang through me as I remember them rushing around the aisles, from little up, making sure every supply they selected was just right for them, and the pinching of pennies to afford it all. Mostly, I miss their faces.
It’s better, for me, not to have those harried trips to drop them off at uni where you pack and unpack, stuffing your mom tears back inside your head where they can’t see them. The first time I dropped them off at their colleges, I held my tears until the car drove away, allowing only then the torrent to unleash with my husband beside me. He would put his hand on my knee, as he fought his own tide, so I could have mine.
A shared necessary letting go.
My kids didn’t choose colleges close by. They were far away — or just far enough not to come home every weekend — and this was a good fit for us. I wanted them to feel they were on their own, no laundry baskets brought home over the weekend, dirty laundry freshly washed and folded neatly by Mom. When you run out of underwear on your own, it’s your tough luck to make sure it’s washed.
Thoughts of kindergarten, the yellow bus swallowing them alive, their tiny faces waving goodbye excitedly to me as it chugged away, are what get to me now. All the memories swim together in a blur of backpacks and lunch tickets, packages of socks neatly folded at the ankle and shoes that light up when you walk, the reams of papers to fill out, signatures to sign, and their glowing faces when they returned home that first day, jabbering away of some small adventure they undertook. None of those leaves; it simply gets bound up in adult faces and grown-in moustaches. It all starts in kindergarten, though, when you take your hands off them, allowing them the freedom to move their bodies about the world on their own.
It’s imperative you take your hands off, or they will only learn to move about with a heavy weight on their backs — a pressing of ideas and ideals piled on in expectation. They must be free to engage the world, sift through it, learn and compress ideas, taking on the ones they know to be important. These are not things you think about when they lift their small legs onto the bus for the very first time, but by the time they leave for college or simply into the workforce, it must be firmly in place. They can only fly far if we let them.
Melissa Herrera is a published author and opinion columnist. She is a curator of vintage mugs and all things spooky, and her book, “TOÑO LIVES,” can be found at www.tinyurl.com/Tonolives. For inquiries, to purchase her book or anything else on your mind, email her at junkbabe68@gmail.com or find her in the thrift aisles.