School Bell

There are many different ways to count a year.  For me I always look at a year as a school year, not a January to January year.

School years have dictated my life since I first entered one wearing purple tights, and purple dress and had that momentous year shoved a purple crayon up my nose.  I had to have it removed by a doctor.  

Happy to pass along each school year to the next as I look back some fade into others, and some teachers names have long been forgotten while others remain glued like paste from a bottle into my grey matter.

Just when I reached that pinnacle of never having to deal with school again, I went ahead and procreated, multiple times.  I was not thinking of the years ahead of me that would be filled with school issues again, only from another side.

This year my youngest will be leaving her elementary school.  For her it marks a goodbye to friends, as they all spread apart to different middle schools, and then high schools.  For her it means starting a new stage, (and not my favorite; middle school)

Where I grew up we all moved en masse to the next phase, the next school, the next building half a block and worlds away from the last school.  Unless you moved out of our town, you went along for the ride with the same people.

The summer before I started middle school my father died.  

My youngest lost her father before middle school began.

This year when she leaves, I will also be leaving.  I have been stuck in elementary school for sixteen consecutive years.  The same school, the same drive which I could do in my sleep and probably have.

I started sixteen years ago with uber enthusiasm.  Volunteering for everything.  Class Mom for each child.  Arranging play dates and dutifully asking the parent I just met if they had any guns in the house.

Now I barely know the parents of My baby's friends.  I am relaxed, I am tired.  She gets the unfortunate lackadaisical parenting that the youngest child often gets.  It has even become a joke between us that if one of her friends parents wants to meet me I ask, "Is she first born?"

Over the last sixteen years I have watched teachers get married, have children, get divorced, quit, programs change, programs remain so much the same that I could play each part easily.  I have had more Thanksgiving dinners in the small cafeteria than I can count, as many years I had to stay for more than one.

I have had my children's  backs when they needed it, and could walk into an ARD meeting fully prepared to get what my child needed in their education.

I imagine the full effect of me leaving this school will not hit until next year when I get up and do not drive there anymore.  When I no longer know the main office phone number by heart,when I do not have to buy a recorder at target the night before it is due, when I am not as concerned with lice.

I also have a child who will be starting her last year of high school next year.  Her senior year.  

These moments belong to them.  They are the true holders of these events.  

I am witness, driver, supporter, mother.  

I have finally graduated from elementary school for the last and final time.