Still Singing Those Back-to-School Blues

The cicadas rattle rhythmically, like several dozen maracas surreptitiously planted on tree limbs. Their song starts out soft and slow, then mounts quickly reaching a feverish crescendo, so loud and long it makes conversation outdoors difficult. September is on our doorstep. The late August mornings, heavy in dew, are cooler now and the sun drifts low behind my neighbor's rooftop much earlier in the day. Soon, as the maples and oaks turn crimson and gold the cicada song will cease, the petunias will die off to be replaced by a blaze of purple pansies and a glory of chrysanthemums. I love Fall. But I love Summer, too, and each year I relinquish my hold on it reluctantly. Ever since I was old enough to attend school, the ads for back-to-school sales always managed to elicit a very real sense of dread in the pit of my stomach. It continues to happen today, a split-second feeling of remorse at seeing all the notebooks, pencils, and lunchboxes overflowing the space at Target where only a few short weeks ago, I happily meandered through displays of patio furniture and flower pots. I remind myself that it's okay, really, I haven't been a student since I graduated from college over thirty years ago.

As a painfully shy elementary school girl I despised leaving my home to go off to school. I begged to be allowed to stay home with my beloved German Shepherd. I would simply miss her too much, but mostly I really never wanted to leave my mom. I would miss her even more. The best part of my day was hurrying out the doors of Higbie Lane Elementary as the dismissal bell clanged through the halls and classrooms. As first grade rolled into second and then into third it became much easier to head off to school. It certainly helped that I adored my third grade teacher. But then shortly after starting sixth grade my family moved to a place so alien that it turned my world upside down. 

In 1971 my parents moved themselves and seven children, two cats and a dog from Long Island, New York to a small town in the western foothills of North Carolina. Every morning for the first week we lived there, I bawled. I did not want to leave the comfort and familiarity of home to go to school. I was still anything but brave and now more insecure than ever before. Everything was different - the language (yes, it was English, but the drawl was very difficult for me to understand at first), the food, the surroundings, the religion, even the color of the dirt - everything. I did make friends relatively quickly, but looking back, that year in particular was especially difficult and the adjustment to my new surroundings came in fits and starts. By the time I was in eighth grade heading off to school was no big deal and any feelings of dread that I experienced during my ensuing high school years only cropped up when I failed to complete a class project on time or forgot to do my homework. I'm sure the idea of homeschooling never even entered my parents' minds way back then, so it was never an option and even if it had occurred to Mom and Dad, I'm not sure they would have done it. But I think I would have loved it, especially in the primary grades.

I suppose, as my husband and I were raising our four children, the separation anxiety and homesickness I often felt as a child resurfaced whenever I left my babies for an extended period of time, (i.e. more than say, an hour?). I fought the pressure from so-called experts, peers, friends, and family to send my children to preschool. I really didn't believe they would learn anything more than I could teach them at home and besides, I would miss them too much. And no, I did not feel the need to use preschool as a way of taking a break from them. When Katie, my oldest, was swallowed up by the big, yellow school bus on her very first day of kindergarten I thought my heart would break into a million pieces. I wore sun glasses so the other moms and dads wouldn't see my tears. It seems so silly in a way. She was only gone for a few hours as kindergarten at that time in our district was only half a day.

Katie, now a mother of two, confesses she hates to be apart from her babies. Even to do a little shopping, for less than an hour, only a few miles away while Nana (me) babysits. She knows, now, what I have been feeling since she was born. It is one of the reasons I eventually decided to home-school my kids. It is why I now scour Facebook every few hours to see if there's a message, a photo posted, a new status update from Megan who is spending a semester in Europe. It is why, even though I know it is a good thing, a step in the right direction, tears well up when I think of Erin leaving home for good. She moves out tomorrow. It is so silly, right? For goodness sake, she's only moving to Falls Church! It's just that there in my heart, I keep seeing her barely two, a mop of bouncing, brunette curls bobbing up and down, squealing with glee as she clambers out of her crib, so proud of herself for figuring out how to escape. It seems like yesterday. As she pursues her goal to practice medicine, who knows where the future will take her  - or any of them?

Of course, this condition - this sadness at separation - this empty nest syndrome - is nothing new or unusual. I've certainly written about it enough. Lately, my Facebook friends' statuses are replete with expressions of sorrow mixed with pride and excitement as they send their babies off to college - some several hundred miles away. As mothers we desperately want to hang on, even though we know letting go is really okay, healthy and normal. My mother - nearly 89 years old - still laments the distance rendering visits to my brother who lives in Texas and me difficult and infrequent. Our other five siblings all live nearby, which is very good for Mom and them, too. She recalls moments when she tearfully bid my eldest brother good-bye only days before Christmas as he headed off to boot camp in the late 1960's. She reminds me that she cried all the way home to North Carolina after visiting me for the first time after I moved away to northern Virginia. She hated seeing my older sister as a young newlywed drive away with her husband to settle into their new home in Indiana. And that same sister, who has returned to North Carolina, knows firsthand how absence and distance tugs at the heart as her daughter, son-in-law and their four children reside several miles away in Colorado. It's hard.

Many moms and dads relish this time of year. For years, I have seen them doing the happy dance and shouting hooray! Good for them! I really am glad they're so happy, but honestly, I've always been a bit mystified by their elation. I just don't get it. Just can't relate. And maybe that's an indictment of my own emotional instability. Maybe, I need to grow up. Letting go is long overdue.

Remember that Staples ad where the dad is blissfully dancing through the aisles, tossing school supplies into his shopping cart to the tune of It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year as his woeful children follow behind forlornly? This one:

I hate that commercial - it insults me. I am not that dad (or mom). But, maybe it's more than the fact that I actually mourned my kids going off to school all day. I think maybe it is because, in this commercial, I'm really the daughter. 

Maybe it is time for me to grow up.