Back To School

Dear Dad,

I’m sad that you aren’t here to see G3 return to school. Something just feels incredibly wrong. The last time he was in school, you were alive. Now he’s back, but you’re dead. We’ve partially come full circle, and yet, the circle can never be fully closed. Sending G3 back to school, in some ways marks the end of the pandemic, but at the same time, the pandemic will never be over. Not for us. We will forever live in the shadow of it. So much has changed since that day in March of 2020 when G3 came home from Bedminster school for the last time. There is so much missing from the lives we had back then.

Even though I feel unbalanced today, I haven’t seen G3 this excited in a long time. He wanted everything to be perfect for his first day back at school. Last weekend, we took him shopping. He picked out a Trapper Keeper, a new book bag, a couple of pairs of jeans, a couple of shirts, and black converse sneakers. In the before, he always dressed like he was going off to work on Wall Street. But he’s outgrown his suits, both literally and figuratively. Starting in a new school, he wanted to redefine himself. He doesn’t want to stand out. He wants to look stylish, while blending in with his classmates. I miss the professional look, and I can’t help but wonder, if the pandemic never happened, would he still have outgrown it? 

What he wanted most was either a denim jacket or a leather one. We didn’t see either over the weekend. On Tuesday, he asked me to take him to the mall. Me shopping for clothes — go ahead, Dad, you can laugh. I know you’d find that very funny. Fashion and I never mixed well. G3 and I walked all around the Bridgewater Mall. We looked in every store that looked like they might have a jacket, and all we found was one denim jacket that G3 liked but didn’t love. So on Wednesday, on the way home from caching, he begged me to stop at Nordstroms. I’ve no idea why or how he got it in head that he had to go there. But since it was on the way, I saw no reason not to humor him. I didn’t expect to find anything. However, the moment we wandered over to the men’s section G3 caught sight of a black jacket that he immediately fell in love with. It was neither denim nor leather, but in G3’s mind it was a combination of both. When I looked at the price tag, I felt awful. There was no way we could afford it, and when I told him, he looked absolutely crestfallen. I hated to disappoint him, so I called Mom. She said to get him the jacket, that she would pay for it. I’m sure you’d have done the same. You always wanted to make him happy. And happiness was radiating out of him when we left the store. He liked the jacket so much that he refused to take it off and sat with it in the house when we got home.

Yesterday, was my last day of homeschooling G3. Since I had wrapped up our last book and our last writing assignment, there wasn’t any thing more to do. The weather was beautiful. It felt like spring. So I took him down to Sourland Mountain Preserve. There were several caches we had not yet gotten. It was a perfect day for a hike, but the trail was extremely muddy. With each step, our boots made a sucking noise as we pulled them from the muck. G3 didn’t seem to mind. Mud oozed over the tops of his boots, dirtying his socks and his pants but he never complained. We weren’t too successful. Most of the caches were hidden by a guy we don’t like. He’s rather diabolical with his hides, putting them in impossibly hard places, with inaccurate coordinates, and either no hint or one that is so unhelpful he might as well have not given one. It didn’t matter. We enjoyed being outdoors and hiking is always more fun than math

This morning, G3 was up before seven. I’m not sure if it was nerves or excitement or both that launched him out of bed earlier than usual. I gave him a big breakfast — waffles and sausage — and he asked me to do his hair. He wanted it slicked back in a pony tail, like Terry Silver in Karate Kid III. As we were were walking out the door, I asked him if he was nervous. “I’m not nervous about my classes. You prepared me for college so this should be easy. But I am worried about making friends.” I would be too. There is nothing I hate more than having to walk into a room full of strangers. (Except traffic. I might acutely hate sitting in really bad traffic more than I hate having to be social with people I don’t know. At least when I don’t want to be social I can read a book. Reading a book in traffic probably wouldn’t be a good idea.) I suspect it will be an emotionally exhausting day for him. It’s a good thing he has three days to recover before having to go back.

The middle school is less than a mile from our house, so I walked with him to avoid the craziness of having to park. I hate looking for parking or trying to figure out where I should leave my car. I was joking with friends last weekend, everyone else wants the flying car, or the self driving car from the Jetsons. I don’t want either. I want a car that folds up into suitcase so that I can avoid the hassle of parking when I go out. G3 didn’t like the fact that I was going with him. He’s too old to be seen in public with his mother, but the school required me to deliver him to them on the first day. In the future, he can either walk or ride his bike by himself.

G3 had a fantastic first day. He came home smiling and eating candy that he picked up at the local mini-mart after his new friend asked him if he wanted to join him to grab a snack. He had such a good time that he said, “I’m really sad that I have to wait until Tuesday to go back.” As for his teachers, he really liked his Science teacher. He didn’t get to meet his math teacher because they made him take a placement test. It was no surprise to either me or Kati that he did well enough to be placed in honors. He did not like his history teacher at all. He said she was very sand-offish. He wasn’t a fan of his English teacher either. She introduced the school’s way of doing close readings and he found it cumbersome and confusing. He had to ask her to explain it several times and he told me, “It’s just really stupid and babyish.” The thing is when you can work at a higher level, the easier layers of the scaffolding seem harder because they are time consuming. I have to agree, nothing turns a person off to reading faster than having to stop after every page to jot down notes. I told G3 not to stop. I told him he should underline the important information and then go back at the end of the each chapter to jot his notes. The teacher tried to get him to read three sixth grade books. G3 read the first few pages of each and said they were boring. She finally gave in and said he could continuing reading Lord of the Rings. Why she didn’t start there, I’ve no idea?

The English teacher sent me and Kati and email that neither of us appreciated. I know, I tend to be critical, so the fact that Kati also found the tone of the email offensive made me feel better. We said G3 belonged in 7th grade and she comes back and tells us he was having difficulty understanding her expectations of how he should do a close reading. But he was very adult about it. He asked for clarification until he understood it. Also, I was annoyed that the teacher told me I need to let him do his homework on his own so that she can determine where to remediate him. WTF? He’s been working independently for a year and a half. Plus, he doesn’t need remediation. Maybe some guidance until he adjusts to her expectations, but there is nothing about his literacy skills that need remediation…except perhaps his comma placement. That he could use some help with. But they don’t teach grammar anymore. They tossed that out the window along with cursive. (And yes, G3 can write beautifully in cursive because once upon a time you told him that civilized people wrote in cursive and he wanted to be civilized — like you — so I taught him. He is currently doing his homework. All by himself. In cursive.) 

I miss you!