It’s that time of year again, the last yawn of August, when pumpkin spice lattes are already back in Starbucks for some ungodly reason and everyone with kids is posting cute pics of them on the first day of school. There is some variation to these photos, although they adhere to a pleasantly generic template. Kids stand on front porches and steps, or posed in front of a bustling school with other families swirling around—or, more likely, taking photos—in the background. They sport fresh haircuts and new t-shirts and sneakers, holding up chalkboards or homemade signs that often give their age, their grade, and their teacher’s name. While the children vary in age from preschool to 12th grade, with every skin color and hair color and motley combination of growing-in teeth you can imagine, there is one thing every single back-to-school photo has in common, and that is that the kids are smiling. Often they are grinning so wide that you would think they were on their way to Disney World instead of a 3rd grade classroom filled with freshly-sharpened pencils. Yup, these kids are pumped.
I can’t relate.
Back to school has always filled me with anxiety. I’m a worrier by nature, and adapting to new situations is one of my least favorite pastimes. As a child I was a good student but a social chameleon, always unsure of my footing in the ever-shifting landscape of trends and mercurial allegiances. When Kriss Kross topped the charts in 1992 I was in the sixth grade, and have a clear memory of excusing myself to go to the bathroom so that I could turn my tapestry vest around backwards to fit in with my classmates. Incredibly, a backwards vest on a pre-teen girl who already sported multi-colored braces and a unibrow did not move the needle towards coolness. But I tried. Every year I would worry about who would be my friend, which teachers I would get, and whether any boys would like me back. Usually I would have to navigate drama and disappointment in at least one of these arenas, or have some kind of identity crisis, or both. So school was not my comfort zone. Maybe that’s why September has always marked the height of my seemingly inborn, free-roaming generalized anxiety, and even though it’s been twenty years since I had a first day of school the existential dread is still strong.
My kids do not love school. On their good days they think it’s OK, at a baseline they tolerate it, but they are not the kind of kids who smile in first-day-of-school photos because they are actually happy about it. Maybe this is just who they both are, or maybe they’ve been swimming in my own anxiety for so long they’ve absorbed it like contaminated well water. When my older son Sam started Pre-K, he had a lot of separation anxiety, and cried every time I left for weeks and weeks. “Have someone else drop him off,” the Pre-K teacher told me bluntly, on the third morning as Sam wailed. “He’s picking up on your anxiety.” No he’s not, you asshole, I thought, trying to appear unflappable and serene. I’m fine. Then I went home and threw up.
So, yeah, it’s probably me. I usually spend the week before Labor Day in a cold sweat, trying to prepare myself for every possible first-day catastrophe. Will my kids walk into school of their own volition, or will someone need to pry them from my arms while I stage-whisper “It’s going to be fun!” as I beat back my own tears? Will their teachers be sweet and supportive like surrogate moms, or brusque and scary like some of the ones from my youth, back when educators could throw things at students without fear of losing their jobs? Will their classmates be kind, best-friends-in-the-making, or merciless and cruel the way kids can be when they’re trying to determine their rank in the pecking order? Sam starts middle school next month—MIDDLE SCHOOL—and while I understand it’s gotten slightly better since the early ‘90s, middle school is by most people’s estimation the worst three years in the collective human experience assuming you don’t go to prison or work for Scott Rudin in your lifetime. How can I send my sweet, soft, unselfconscious baby boy into that kind of lion’s den knowing what could await him? Why can’t I see into the future, and moreover why can’t I control every aspect of it????
In my next life, I would like to have psychic powers, or at least a modicum of chill.
I am trying to find ways to lessen my anxiety, and stop imagining worst-case scenarios (which I know I do as a defense mechanism, imagining that somehow I will be prepared in the event of catastrophe if I am apoplectic with worry beforehand, kind of like doing a Karate Kid training montage for my amygdala). I am trying to become more comfortable living in the present and accepting that I cannot know what’s coming. But back-to-school photos always trigger a fear response, like I am hiking and suddenly come face to face with a bear (jk, lol I don’t hike). Why are everyone else’s kids so happy about going back to school? I think. Why is it so easy for them? What is wrong with me/what have I done to make my own kids this way? Of course I know this isn’t helpful. It’s not easy for everyone, pictures aren’t always true reflections of feelings, and most people have the good sense to keep their neuroses to themselves instead of forcing everyone they know to read about them in a newsletter.
I hope that if you have kids, they love school and are genuinely psyched to go back for a new year. Your photos make me jealous, yet I am happy for you. But just in case you and yours are as apathetic and/or anxious as me and mine: I see you. And I’ll tell you what I need so badly to hear myself: that one way or another, it will all be OK.
Just don’t let them wear a tapestry vest, forwards or backwards. No child should have to go through that.