Barbara Roden
Caledonia Courier
All across the province it’s back to school time (grade school, I mean: kindergarten through grade 12) for hundreds of thousands of parents and children. Is it, as those ubiquitous TV ads would have it, “the most wonderful time of the year” for parents? Not where back to school shopping is concerned. Any parent who’s recently had to shop for even basic items will have no problem believing that the back to school spending season is second only to Christmas in terms of cash outlay. Perhaps the ads mean that it’s the most wonderful time of the year for anyone selling school supplies, school clothing, and anything else destined to wind up in the school’s lost and found bin by the middle of October.
For the last 13 years our household has, like so many others, battled the back to school blues (students blue about going back to school, and parents blue when they think of next month’s credit card bill). We’ve been governed by the simple rhythm of the school calendar which is, by and large, something you don’t really think about; it’s simply the way things are, as immutable as the seasons.
Well, all that has come to an end, as our son Tim graduated from grade 12 in June. Don’t ask me where those 13 years fled to. It seems like only yesterday that I was putting his kindergarten photo into an album while he gazed up at me, and then there I was, in the blink of an eye, gazing up at all 6’7” of him as we walked to the stage at graduation so he could receive his diploma.
I do know, however, that life in the Roden household will be somewhat different from here on in, no longer governed by warnings about missing the bus, reminders about homework, and attending all those events—PAC meetings, Christmas concerts, month-end assemblies—that crowd the school calendar. Part of me rejoices in the fact that Tim is now starting on another stage of his life; but part of me already misses the school days that have formed the timetable of our world since he started kindergarten all those years ago.
There are things I won’t miss, however, such as the bewildering number of forms that had to be filled out at the start of each school year, many of them carbon copies of the forms I’d filled out the year(s) before. Since we’ve lived at the same address for 18 years, I should probably have just photocopied that first set of forms back in kindergarten and kept recycling them.
I also won’t miss the perpetual headache that is school lunches, the realisation that I have completely forgotten everything I learned in high school math (I’m sorry, Mr. Cunningham; you did your best), and that my high school French isn’t much better, and the discovery—in the depths of a backpack—of a notice about something coming up the next day that entails a) the baking of 24 cupcakes; b) the production of an insanely detailed costume; c) the creation of some craft that Martha Stewart could knock off in an hour but which will cause me nothing but grief, a few choice swear words, and a search for bandages; or d) all of the above (a particularly nasty recurring nightmare I’ve been having that will, I hope, finally go away now).
Not that I didn’t try my best, when I got the notices about those crafty parent-and child projects that various teachers insisted on holding. When Tim was in kindergarten, parents were invited to come in one day near Christmas and make gingerbread houses with their children. Like the eager first- (and only-) time Mom that I was, I decided against buying a gingerbread house kit with pre-baked gingerbread (yes, these are a thing), and instead looked up gingerbread recipes and followed the most promising (that is to say, easiest) one as best I could.
I ended up with several sheets of (pretty much edible, once I scraped off the burnt bits) gingerbread which possessed roughly two straight edges among them. I decided that the icing would (probably) hold them together, and act as a sort of grout, which was a bonus.
When I took the gingerbread into school the next day, however, I was taken aback to see that most of the other moms had purchased kits. A quick survey revealed that the moms who had baked gingerbread were almost all first-timers; the others were on their second or third child, and had presumably been there, done that, and decided life was far too short.
Then there was the overnight field trip to the Vancouver Aquarium when Tim was in grade three. I stowed everything we were bringing—duffel bag, sleeping bags, pillows—under the bus, but was surprised to see, when I boarded, that most of the other parents were clutching pillows. By the time we got to Yale, not quite halfway to Vancouver, I realized that the pillows were for more than just sleeping with, since I’d never ridden a school bus for longer than a few minutes and had not appreciated how bum-numbingly jolting they are for hours at a time. School bus drivers of the world, I salute you.
And now it’s come to an end, in what seems like no time at all—certainly not 13 years—leaving little except memories. Would I change anything, if it was all to do again? Not much; although I’d definitely give those gingerbread house kits a try.