We’re back at it: the routine that September brings. Full calendars. Coordinated schedules. Structured time. Registration fees. The never-ending saga of the question that has no easy answer: “what do you want for dinner?”
September ushers in sweeping changes. You can smell it in the air. You can feel it in the breeze. Sweater weather and socks.
It doesn’t matter how old you get or how your priorities change, the transition from summer to fall brings back memories of starting school, or moving out to go to school, or moving on altogether. The angst is both excitement and uncertainty.
Parents walking a little one to daycare or kindergarten, there is one thing you have to do when you reach the door to the classroom: walk away. You have to turn around and let them figure it out. They will. Or they won’t and you’ll get a call. But you have to let them try. Hardest damn thing to do.
Parents moving their grown children into a dorm room or an off-campus apartment, the same rules apply. Put their boxes down and walk away. Let them plot out their next chapter by setting their scene, their way. They’ll figure it out. They will. Or you’ll get the call that they’ve switched their major and their school and need to move back home (me). But you have to let them fly. Hardest damn thing to do.
If you’re in that sweet middle spot, where your kids know how to navigate school but don’t want to go, because, well, did you? No. So, as you drag them from their screen-induced insomnia, make sure when you drop your kids off at high school or middle school that you turn up the volume on the car stereo really loud. Play something you’d have listened to in high school. Not the cool retro-beats, but something like, a little MC Hammer, “U Can’t Touch This?” Oh, the horror. Open the sunroof for better acoustics. Better still, if you still own your parachute pants, put them on and get out of the car to wave goodbye to junior as they run into school like the ground is made of hot lava. Make an entrance so they don’t have to.
I’m so grateful to be through all of these stages as a student and also as a mother, but I look back on those days now as bittersweet. Sure, it’s a stressful time.
But there were so many great moments in there, where I’d witness in real time the beautiful metamorphosis of life: learning and trying, failing and achieving, heartbreak and resiliency. There were days we thought we’d never push through it, and yet, here we are.
For the teachers out there, trying to get students to focus in a world that’s lost its own focus, I wish you a great year. I wouldn’t last a day in your world and while people are quick to criticize your profession, I know most of them wouldn’t survive it either. You carry more than your job description compensates. Some of us know that. Remember your “why.”
Education assistants, please know your worth, even when the powers-that-be don’t seem to. You are life changers for families. And support staff, you are the spine of the schools you serve. You matter.
Here we go again.
Routines. Sweaters and socks. Change. Crock pot dinners.
All good.
