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back to school

THE ECSTASY & ANXIETY
It Feels Like the First Day of School All Over Again!
By Joel Swartzberg

The night before the first day of school was always the longest night of my life. I’d lie wide awake for hours, wondering about my locker location, who my lunch table neighbors would be, what my teachers would be like, and whether my “Trapper Keeper” notebook was still in style or as antiquated as the unworn parachute pants hanging in my closet. I’d start the next day too nervous and charged to eat breakfast, and end it too exhausted and intimidated to contemplate anything except dinner and sleep, usually in that order. Were it not for adrenaline and caffeinated soda, I’d never have made it through.

When my son started first grade, he had no such anxiety. To a first-grader, school is still a relatively fun, communal adventure punctuated by lunch, music, gym, recess, and story time. Compared to preschool, there’s a little more organization, a little more discipline, and a new, innocent-seeming concept called homework. But watching Evan crawl off under the weight of his heavy backpack brought much of that schoolhouse nervous energy back to me. So much so that when I did my first stint as class parent, I ate a gratuitously big breakfast, followed class rules obsessively, and made doubly sure I wasn’t wearing last season’s khakis. I resisted dressing my son in my own anxiety as best I could.

Now that Evan’s entering third grade, and his twin sisters starting kindergarten, I still feel anxious. My girls are deciding which dresses and colorful hair bands to wear, and I can see the seeds of their teenage years so clearly being planted. I look over at Evan’s massive backpack, adorned with zippered pockets, water bottle holders, super-padded straps, a reinforced bottom, and roller wheels, and think, am I sending my kid to school or to Costa Rica?

I so desperately want to be a fly on the bulletin board, to watch and observe everything going on, like the location of their cubbies, with whom they eat their snacks, what the teachers are like, and if the Star Wars backpack I got Evan is still in style, or more like the two seasons-old Power Rangers lunchbox sitting under the sink. In more narcissistic moments, I want to steer them to success, volunteering the right answers, modeling perfect courtesy, and demonstrating all the patience and poise that I didn’t display at all when I was in grade school. In short, I want them to be age- inappropriate. This is exactly why teachers shoo parents away after the bell rings, or in some cases get restraining orders.

After the kids are gone, parents slowly turn and leave silently like zombies. Well, most of us. I usually glance at the big classroom window, estimating just how tall I could stand in the prickly bush below it.

My kids will be fine of course. They’re really so good at handling anything that comes their way, and I’ve equipped them as best I can with confidence, support, ringpops. On that sunny first school day morning, when I stand with them outside the big red doors, comparing myself to every genial-looking, powertie or flip-flop-wearing Dad around me, I pledge not to bring my neuroses.

This time, I’ll just bring tissues.

Joel Swartzberg is a freelance writer from New Jersey.