And so it begins: The great cycle of washing, dressing, feeding, dropping-off, picking-up, haranguing, feeding, washing, and putting to bed of children that constitutes the resumption of school.
These are the bittersweet days when small, apprehensive persons first encounter “circle time” and learn to line up for “library,” while their mothers sit weeping in the parking lot.
These are the nail-biting days when new kids sidle into class, hoping to fit into an alien roomful of staring strangers. These are glory days when sophomore swans return to campus in place of the freshman ducklings they were back in June, a thousand years ago.
In some households, these are tear-streaked days as mothers and fathers move wonderingly through bedrooms and mudrooms so recently heaped with belongings and now suddenly emptied by sons and daughters rushing off into the adventure of new adult lives, lived elsewhere.
In younger households, parents are still filling out innumerable forms – declaring when their children had their tetanus shots, whether they’re signed them up for hot lunch, who’s allowed to collect them – and digging out ancient lunchboxes and withered cleats and explaining that, yes, actually, they can last a bit longer, and, anyway, when I was your age no one got a new lunchbox every year, so there.
Oh, these are the days – already! – of sudden bouts of sneezing, of spiking temperatures, and the notice so dreaded by the families of school-age children: “…regret to report a case of lice, so please check your child carefully…”
And you do. You check one child, then another, and for a moment you think you’re in the clear. But you’re not. For there, pinched between your reluctant fingers, is the tiniest token of the resumption of school, a louse. One single, measly louse. One single, tiny, lousy louse that’s just loused up your whole entire day.
Just in case the louse brought friends, everyone has to be washed in nasty shampoo. Everyone’s pillows have to be sprayed with nasty aerosol. Everyone’s linen must be washed in hot water, all the hairbrushes need to be boiled, and everyone’s teddy bears must be sealed in a plastic bag and secreted away for a couple of weeks.
Then, for extra fun, someone must inspect and comb through with a tiny metal comb every hair on the head of every member of the family, and you know who that is.
And you can’t help but chuckle at the spectacle. Here you are, with all your technology and your chemicals and your fast-moving combustion-engine-driven vehicles and you have to sit quietly scrutinizing the roots of the hair of your offspring in exactly the same way that one baboon grooms another.
Meanwhile, isn’t it funny how the weather so exactly validates the back-to-school calendar? One minute it’s summer, it’s August, and children are doing cannonballs into swimming pools. The next minute it’s autumnal September, the air is crisp and late afternoon brings the hiss and grumble of big yellow school buses.
This week, you could almost hear the snap of 10,000 switches as Washington turned off its air conditioning. You could almost hear the ka-ching as the women of Washington suddenly thought: Wool! Leather! Tweed!
But first there are summer-strewn houses to put into order, and pantry shelves to be replenished. At the supermarket, little explosions of joy erupt as acquaintances encounter one another after the long hot months and episodes of being “away.”
Standing in the checkout line, mothers confide in one another what a relief it is, school starting again. “It’s time,” they laugh, and “I’m so ready!” Like the school year itself, there’s a pleasantly predictable rhythm to these exchanges.
Each party expresses relief at the annual miracle. There’s a pause. Then each woman in turn offers a wistful anecdote supporting the idea that this past summer was, really, so lovely.
There’s another pause, which comes to an end when both parties laugh and agree that, still, frankly, it’s good to get everyone out of the house again.
Examiner columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of the The Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursday.
