The Bittersweets of Back to School

Back to school is a season of it's own with it's freshly sharpened pencils, and the look of a box of unused crayons. It's a new beginning. Like springtime.

The requests for school supplies are a little different then when I was a kid. We had one folder and one composition book. The classroom shared a bin of dull nubby crayons with no wrappers on them and we borrowed pencils from one another when our own were too small to write with.

My daughter's list asks for 20 freakin glue sticks! 20! No way she is going to use 20 glue sticks. And I assume every kid in the class has the same request for supplies, so if there are fifteen kids in her class and each one buys 20 glue sticks, you're telling me as a class they need 300 glue sticks?

Everything is mechanical now too. Crayons. Colored pencils. Regular pencils. There is no nostalgic smell of a freshly sharpened pencil or the loud grinding of a manual pencil sharpener on the wall with a line of students behind it.

I wish my kids could experience raw learning. School for what it is. Not get caught up in new backpacks every single year ( in our house they use their backpack until it's falling apart) and new supplies when the ones from last year are just as good.

I get excited about my two older ones starting school again because let's face it, I'm home with three kids all day, every day, for months. This is fun in the beginning. We get to hang out everyday, do whatever we want and there is no wake-up time or rush to get to bed. We get to visit family and go on vacation, but then something happens. They get bored and we all begin to annoy one another.

I think I'm so ready to send them off when the time comes, and I watch as my 12 year old flies out of the car, too cool now to cling to me with tear filled eyes; not wanting to go to school.I'm the one with tears in my eyes now.

 My six year old telling me that she will think about me all day long and it makes her feel sad because she misses me, as she slowly gets out of the car and bounces off to her classroom. How did they grow up so fast?

On the bad days, the days when I haven't showered, and realize at 3pm I haven't even eaten lunch and my older two kids are fighting and the baby wants to be held, I make myself stop. I stop and think about how my heart feels when they aren't with me. I keep holding the baby, because one day she won't want me to hold her anymore and I'll wish I could. I smile at my two older kids arguing about who pinched who first because when they are gone there is silence. If I deeply wanted quiet in my life I wouldn't have became a mother. It's the noise, and the craziness that bring the joy, not the alone time, although this is nice on occasion. And each year of school complete is another year closer to when they leave me for good.

Sending them back to school is bittersweet. I get a piece of myself back, a moment of silence to breathe and remember who I am. But I also temporarily lose two very special parts of who I am as well and hope that when I send them out into the world and entrust strangers to teach them, that I'm doing a good job, and they will be okay.