School

School begins today.  As a child, a teacher, a parent I have loved the first day of school.  New notebooks and point-perfect pencils, untouched lines on unopened paper, smudge-free erasers collected next to pens in a pouch.  What possibilities lie ahead!

Yesterday I attended open house at my local middle school to ready myself – um, I mean my daughter – for sixth grade.  I resonated with memories.  It surprises me that I couldn’t tell you what I had for dinner Friday but I remember the walk to my homeroom in junior high, math class, the band room, the lunchroom, the school spirit t-shirt, the shape of the endless lumpy field around which we ran in PE.

The definition of school from dictionary.com is as follows.
noun -
1.  an institution where instruction is given, especially to persons under college age
2.  an institution for instruction in a particular skill or field
3.   a college or university
verb –
1.  to educate in or as if in a school; teach; train

I’ll be honest – it surprises me that so much mental photography of something I finished over thirty years ago remains in storage in my head!  Many of my school memories are positive when I examine them.  Angst is there because, well, it is.  But it would be wrong for me to present those years as nothing but a misery.  I made some quality friends in middle school who continued to be pals through high school.  I read Judy Blume, wore braces, did my homework, listened to pop music, prayed for boobs.

Perhaps that is why there is an urge for me to get into my daughter’s life and give her a heads up that the choices made now matter because she will remember them.  I want to let my child have her own experience while giving her a little of what I learned without tainting the activities and opportunities with my own feelings about what is cool or not, who should be trusted or not, what emotions may come up or not. 

With striking clarity I am aware that I am still learning, even now.  I have not completed the book on living and cannot just hand its pages to her knowing the resolution of “it all” and the way everything ends up.   It is my first day of school again today, too.   

School

Remember the tile geometric squares
squeegee clean with bleach and yarns
twisted at the end of a mop like hair
ready in a closet to clean up messes
that surely arise with many feet passing
though and around corridors toward
teaching, charted and graphed to allow
learning among peers who watch
see who messes up, dresses down,
makes good grades, kisses the boys,
does what they are told instead of being
bad enough to break rules with hope of
earning cool for a day or a week the
flood of firsts in the months of school.