As of last week, school is in session here in Northern Virginia.  With my only child starting her third year in college, I’m no longer directly involved in the much-ado about back-to-school.    

But until I’m deaf, I’ll be well aware of the start of the new school year.  Once again, on weekday mornings beginning around 6:30 AM, the school buses make their loud, laborious way down the side street below our bedroom windows.  There are so many buses.  They swoosh, they roar, they sigh, they creak.  They emit piercing back-up beeping sounds for extended periods. We discovered, when we moved here nearly twenty years ago, that we had settled in a pivotal juncture in Fairfax County, a dividing line between two school districts. If we moved across the street, our daughter would have to change schools. There are buses for elementary, middle and high school students for both districts, as well as those for several magnet schools. There used to be a special Kindergarten bus in the afternoon, before the all-day program arrived. Some buses are picking up or dropping off; others turn around, having reached the end of their routes. 

The clamor and commotion of the school buses every fall brings back the conflicting and powerful emotions I felt on our daughter’s first-ever school day.  The day she started Kindergarten, when we sent her off, parentless, on one of those enormous, monstrous, heaving, yellow-orange vehicles. 

Our five-year old put on a brave face that memorable day.  My husband and I watched and waved, smiling with forced cheer, trying not to grimace, until we could no longer see her dear little blonde head peering from the window.  Then we turned away, avoiding other parents, fighting back tears.  H quickly jumped in his car and followed the bus to school.  At a distance, he waited until she was safely inside the building.  All that morning I wondered:  What is she doing now?  And now?  Is her class lining up to come home yet?  Just a few hours later, around 12:30, the Kindergarten bus dropped her off at the end of our driveway.  When our girl emerged happy, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  The after-school photo I took of her, sitting in our doorway, shows her confidence, her triumph.   

Last week I looked back at that photo and compared it with the first-day images preceding it in the morning.   They told a different story.  The group photos struck me as especially poignant.  My daughter, like the other younger children, tries to express a sense of ease, but her anxiety and trepidation show through.  The bulky backpacks contribute to the littlest ones’ slightly awkward postures.  No one’s clothes seem quite right.  Wasn’t our daughter hot in that fall sweater?  All the other kids wear tee shirts.  And within the group, each child is a little island unto itself.  Even the older ones who appear more self-assured, even they look isolated and alone.  At least they do to me.  Maybe, in a fit of nostalgia, I’m reading too much into these snapshots from fifteen years ago.  But I don’t think so.    

During the morning dog walk with the pack, I heard the first-day stories from friends who still have kids in school.  Later, I saw the photos on Facebook.  There are the little ones summoning their courage as they hold up hand-lettered “first day of” signs.  There are the older ones glaring sullenly, attempting to shoot poison dart rays at a parent who insists they pose uncomfortably in the gray light of dawn. 

Several of my friends are dreading the college send-off that looms in the future.  I understand, and I remember.  But I will tell them this:  it will probably be less painful than that off-to-Kindergarten day. 

And it will be here before you know it.   

   

  

 

Back in June, when I last wrote a post for Wild Trumpet Vine, I anticipated a summer full of major changes.  Those expectations were fulfilled.     

A bare-bones summary of key events in the life of my family since then:

Our daughter graduated from high school.  We shopped for college gear.  We enjoyed our annual Cape Cod vacation.  The sale of my childhood home in Atlanta was completed.  We moved our daughter into her first-year residence hall at the University of Virginia.  (She had made her college decision, at long last, at the end of April.)  I flew to Atlanta to deal with the final culling and packing of forty-nine years worth of accumulation, and to prepare the house for the new owners.   A dear friend drove my mother to Virginia to spare her from witnessing those last frenetic stages of the move.  At the end of that week, I walked through bare, empty rooms, turned the keys over to a new family, and flew back to Virginia. 

Three days later, the huge Atlas moving van arrived at my mother’s new house, conveniently located next door to ours.  Unpacking has been a slow process, hampered and overshadowed by the cloud of my mother’s ongoing back pain and the rounds of doctor visits it requires.  She’d been in worsening pain in the weeks leading up to her departure from Atlanta.  Now we know the cause, but treatment is challenging.  Mama, who has been for most of her life a whirling dervish of industrious creativity, is now largely confined to sofa-sitting.   

If this account sounds dry and devoid of emotion, it’s because I’ve had little time for reflection.  I’ve been packing my thoughts away, much as I packed up the Atlanta house.   Like the boxes still stored in my mother’s basement and garage, I’ll get to them one day before long and sort them out.  Until then, I’ll ease back into Wild Trumpet Vine.  I’m not yet up to the task of writing about the big things, so I’ll focus on little ones.  I foresee quietly scintillating commentaries on the colors of the season, the many charms of my silent, sleeping dog, that sort of thing.  Whether they’re read by others or not, I will write for my own mental health.  I hope a few of you will stick with me as WTV awakens from dormancy. 

 

 

This year, my daughter’s last day of school took me somewhat by surprise.  She’s been finished with all work and even finals for a while now.  On days of exams from which she was exempt, she didn’t need to show up on school grounds.  Or did she?  Would her absence be excused?  Did I need to call the school or send a note, and what should I say?  Would she be penalized if I told the truth?  Would that even matter?  We’ve debated these questions for four years, and the answers remain up in the air.  My daughter has grown from young teen to young adult in this span, but some things we never managed to learn.  Only this much was certain:  if she showed up to class, there would be no assignments to complete.  She had finished them all, and successfully, more than satisfactorily.  But there would be parties and goodbye opportunities not to be missed. 

Tradition is important to my daughter.  On Monday she wore her “Lazt Day of School” earrings.  She made these in sixth grade, and she has worn them every last day since.  She used the alphabet beads she got for Christmas when she was three.  No more s’s remained in the set; hence the z in “last.”  Monday was apparently  the official last day of classes for seniors.  But many special activities continued this week: Convocation, Senior Picnic, Senior Breakfast, graduation rehearsal, the Senior trip to Kings’ Dominion.  Today there is yet another graduation rehearsal.  

The actual graduation ceremony is tomorrow.  In the wake of so many to-dos surrounding the close of senior year, the reality of my daughter’s  graduation has escaped me.  I started to write “endless to-dos” above.  But they’re not endless.  In fact, they are ending.  Really and truly.  They end today.  The thought lands with a thud.  I haven’t had a chance to consider the true finality of it all.  The finality that this “commencement” entails. 

I’ve been a bit cavalier about these end times.  Our daughter is rarely at home; she merely stops by briefly.  When she leaves for college, it won’t be that different, will it?  For now, I’m going to keep telling myself that’s the case.  

I have the summer to come to terms with her departure.  To face the new beginning that follows this ending.