And just like that, the summer is over and the girls are back in school. Sure, we will have a few more weeks of warm weather that will make getting up and spending the day at school complete torture, but the arrival of September means a new start and a season change to fall. As I got the girls ready for bed last night and for 5th and 2nd grades, the talk inevitably turned to my time in school, and specifically 5th grade as my rising ten year old expressed a little apprehension about it. Last year had been pure hell for her, and for me, as we tried to work our way through a difficult teacher and the anxiety being in her classroom produced. I'd stopped pretending 1/2 way through the year and told her that I agreed with her feelings about her teacher but that shit happens, for real, and that you can't stop striving because someone is trying to bring you down. I meant it. It is hard to learn that and as hard to teach.
What I remember about my fifth grade class are small fleeting moments. Memory is like that. I am not even sure that what I am remembering actually happened in fifth grade and is not an amalgamation of that heady late elementary-middle school block. My teacher, Mrs. S, was an old school, Southern, pinch-lipped, white biddy who wore skirt suits nearly every day. Drab colored skirt suits with skirts well below the knee and a mid-sized heel with pantyhose to make her legs look a beigy-tan. Her hair was coiffed like a cotton candy puff and sprayed so that not a hair moved. She spoke in that breathy, southern school marm tone that told you she had little time for your shenanigans, even if the shenanigans just meant asking to be excused to use the bathroom.
This woman brought little to no joy to my life (and I was still of the goody two shoes variety at that time). She seemed to revel in giving bad grades, marking papers in red, and sucking the life out of the room. I remember people getting in trouble, especially a boy named Derek who'd surely be diagnosed with ADHD today, and the creaky spot in the floor that I tried to avoid when I walked across the room to sharpen my pencil. My feet had grown so quickly that year that the only shoes that fit me were women's shoes and styles and I had this pair of wooden clogs with a heel that I wish to God I still had but don't. I remember that one girl in my class had reached puberty years ahead of the rest of us and that we all, boys and girls alike, obsessively watched her boobs doing what they do. I remember there were some fast booty girls that were rumored to have been caught kissing sixth and seventh grade boys and that I was both appalled and intrigued. There were combs in back pockets but I wore my hair in braids. And I remember for the first time that the school day seemed to go on forever. Mrs. S was no fun. In fact, she was as rigid and dry as her old pruney lips announced. I hated being in her class. And I hated her. After that year, thanks to puberty and beauty standards I couldn't meet and a sense of loneliness and isolation, I started to hate myself a little.
I watch my ten year old running up the hill to her elementary school with the other 3rd through 5th graders looking for signs of her sense of worth and value. I wonder if she pays attention to all the details that now seem my only memory of that time. All the kids look enthusiastic and eager and too young to think about any of the things I recall about fifth grade. My ten year old is all curiosity, rainbows, cute animal videos, and pop culture memes that seem to sometimes go over her head. She is still wearing ponytails and a tank top, no bra-lette. She is all legs and thanks to the crowning of the kids as king, she has age appropriate footwear and clothing even though her paws are getting big like a growing puppy. But she is also musical.ly and snapchat photos and silly little texts to her girlfriends on the phone we got her to stay in touch with us on her walk home. When I ask her if kids talk about love interests or care about their hair and clothing more than they used to, she rolls her eyes at me to tell me that my line of questioning is embarrassing and ridiculous because 'no' or more likely because she cannot imagine that I know how it goes.
Sometimes she tells me about something funny she has seen on line or an app her friends have shared with her. Other times she brings to me the most adorable, well-crafted stuffed animals that she knitted or sewed with no pattern or guide and I think about how amazing she is, about the talent she has that has absolutely nothing to do with me. At night, when her most anxious thoughts and fears creep in, she whimpers and whispers her self-doubt into my ear, tells me that she just doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up and asks if she really has to know right now. She wonders aloud why a girl in her class is wearing and wants to wear make up and stylish clothes "like an adult" and talks to everyone like she is grown. She tells me she feels woefully alone and is afraid not of the small details of her life but of the big picture. How we all got here. How do we discover what our role is to play on this planet? What if she just can't find her way?
And I answer. All of the questions to the best of my ability. And we talk about the anxiety and self-doubt that she is predisposed to thanks to me, and how she can best navigate it. I tell her that kids of her generation do things much sooner that we did and we laugh together and agree that yes, she got the teacher that nearly broke her spirit one year before I did. I tell her about Derek and the girl who developed early, about Mrs. S's sullen way of presenting almost everything. About how still and quiet and lonely that room felt to me. I tell her about the clicking of my adult sized clogs on the floor and the dreams I had staring out the window. I told her that I started to believe I couldn't be anything I dreamt of that year, that I started to believe I was not enough. That the way this teacher spoke of me to my parents and that they did not tell her to 'fuck off' made me wonder if I really needed to work that much harder or if they were just not "getting me." (At the time I went with work that much harder but now I am not so sure that was the right answer.)
This morning, though I'd offered to let her wear her mane of hair, now blond and brown from the sun, down, my 5th grader still chose ponytails. She wore high tops and a blouse-y purple top that has a built in tank top so she didn't have to sport an undergarment. Despite feeling a little under the weather, she decided not to miss the second day of school. Though she is a little shell-shocked from last year, she is willing to go forward feeling hopeful, accepting this new path and direction. She knows what she is ready for and what she is not quite yet. As I pulled up to our drop off spot, I wished her insight and guidance and goodness on this second day. I told her I'd tell her how I loved her from inside the car so she would not have to be mortified by my beaming pride once out in the real world. She grabbed her backpack and tightened her safety patrol belt and said, "I want everyone to know that you love me." She closed the door and got on her path. I watched as long as I could see her, hoping she would turn to look just one more time.
And she did.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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