Back To School, and Reality

by Liv Stecker

One of my Facebook friends made a comment the other day about how she didn't manage to have all of her ducks in a row at the beginning of the school year. It caught me off guard, because it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps some people actually DO have it all together then. Certainly not me. Maybe it's because I work a lot in the summer and the first day of school usually hits me squarely in the face like a tsunami of guilt for all of the school shopping I didn't do, used stubs of pencils and questionable back to school outfits that my children have imagined, when left to their own devices. 

I see all of the first day of school pictures adorning Facebook: scrubbed-shiny children with brand new notebooks and matching socks. And I fantasize about next year, because our first day of school photos, on the years I am lucky enough to get them, look a little something like a trophy show from a recent yard sale binge. "Your older sister's spiral notebook from last year is just fine. There are at least 17 clean pages in it. Stop complaining. You love red, and freshman graffiti. Trust me."  My poor kids. I would use the working single mother excuse except that I know working single mothers who somehow get it all together. Maybe they could offer a class? Or better yet, adopt my children. 

But no. My 11 year old leaves for that fateful first day looking like a character from the Walking Dead who just looted a department store in Arkansas. At least she's happy. Smiling in her too-big shoes and too-small dress. Sunshiny and excited to scope out the new teacher and the new kids and the new lunches - which are curiously like the old lunches, but it's been three months, so we can pretend. The first day of school is so hopeful and bright. Anticipating new BFFs and unmet crushes, plasticky smelling sports uniforms that nobody has worn yet. Textbooks begging to be lost and left behind everywhere. Lockers to be personalized and cluttered with class-passed notes and candy wrappers. 

I have never had it together on the first day of school. Maybe by the last day if I am super lucky, work really hard and actually have the energy to care, my kids will have been on time to some of their sports meetings, combed their hair for a school picture and packed at least one cold lunch - because that is what being "put together" looks like. I am so grateful that my children are gracious with me. That they don't hate me for my parental shortcomings. Obviously they don't know any better, other than the occasional glimpse into the perfect life of a friend who has outfits ironed the night before, lunches lined up on a refrigerator shelf, and sibling photos pre-arranged for picture day. Not us. We don't even own an iron. My grandmother would be so ashamed. 

The teachers are a whole different story. They DO know better and are blessed with some of the perfect parents who make every single conference on time with questions jotted down to ask, concerns pre-planned for discussion and a gift at the end of the year. I found out about teacher's gifts two years ago, right after my oldest daughter had graduated high school. Apparently it's a thing. Parent's give gifts to teachers after they have survived the school year. I haven't figured out it if it's a "thank you for not strangling my child - I understand the self restraint that that requires" gift, or an "I'm sorry that my child gave you ringworm, head lice, the flu and a dead chipmunk that you never found after show and tell" gift, or a "you are my hero for taking my child for 6 hours a day, making them brilliant and you're still standing" gift. Any of the three seem appropriate, but I am concerned that if I start giving teacher's gifts, teacher's from my children's past will feel slighted, not to mention the regifted Starbucks card with $8.72 on it might seem offensive. I keep maintaining that my ignorance about this tradition is rooted in my homeschooling career, and the only gift my mom/teacher ever got was the chance to go out to coffee with her friends and not being called back home for a medical emergency. Which I think happened once or twice. (I probably owe her a lot of Starbucks cards.)

It's a karmic cycle of justice really, since shortly after I found out about teacher's gifts, I became a substitute teacher, and understand how desperately these saint-like people deserve every stroke of affirmation they get. It's like another opportunity for school-related guilt all over again.Just when the first day of school trauma is wearing off and I have finally bought my kid shoes that fit, the Pinterest-perfect teacher gifts start rolling in and I have to pretend that I don't notice, or else do a lot of back-payment. It's a hard thing to juggle when you've also forgotten to make cupcakes for your kids' birthday before you left for work, and you don't even know how many allergies her classmates have or whether her teacher is cupcake friendly... Or the halloween treat dilemma, and the Valentine quandary... So many opportunities to fail. Or shine, if the stars align and I do it right for once. 

I guess it doesn't matter who you are, married mother, single mother, working mother, stay at home mother, homeschooling mother - we all face the same battles to one extent or another and define our successes and failures by the perfect Joneses next door who bought all of the best school supplies in late july and left us scrounging through the random left overs of crappy pencil sharpeners and useless erasers. I thought I would be clever and buy school supplies on Amazon this year while I was working. It worked out ok, including impressing my kids with these ADORABLE thumb drives and cute pencil pouches, but the shoes were still too big and the sense of good-mom accomplishment was lacking. But as long as our kids are happy and healthy and GETTING EDUCATED, It's ok. We'll go back to school again next year and maybe then I will nail it, but probably not.