How To Survive the Last Day of School

Take a walk. Notice things. The scrubby park where you take the dog has been mowed. There is now a trail through the grass, thigh-high grass. Just yesterday it was April and you were walking through here looking at dead stems and discarded dog-fetching sticks. Now, on the day you’ve forgotten a fetch toy, you can’t see any sticks, because they’re hiding in this glorious, thick, verdant grass. It smells good. The sun is probably burning your back but who cares! You’re wearing a tank top! A tank top.

When you feel the sorrow creeping in, as it does every two steps, recognize that this is not the snarky sorrow for the end of your free time, though that is there, of course, simmering. This is a greater sorrow, one that has no end, the sorrow for the passing of time. Being sad about this is a kind of bowing to the presence of something greater than you, which is why you feel a shrinkage, and maybe even a good bit of fear. It’s diminishing, to understand that you exist under the arch of something uncontrollable and massive, as big as the planet, the galaxy, even the universe. You now have a seventh grader, and seventh grade, on certain days, feels like a couple of weeks ago. There are still hurts and triumphs from seventh grade that sing like a soprano. This puts you and your daughter even closer on the spectrum of shared experience, which is just bizarre because wasn’t it just last month that she was toddling about over the grass, dancing naked with an umbrella in the rain? The creature that she was wasn’t quite human, certainly not shared-experience human. She was something to observe and cuddle and rejoice in, protect and help and teach. But this one! Well. What is she?

There is also the matter of your fourth grader. You can’t quite call him a fifth grader because the fifth grade, you’ve learned, is the beginning of trouble. Third grade meant moving to the big kid hall and the end of Santa. In fifth grade, the girls got meaner, sassier, and way louder. You don’t really know what’s in store for the boys, but you know that two years ago, all the former Wordmaster boys you taught stopped speaking to you in the hall. There was significant eye dodging. The idea that one of those boys might hold his mother’s hand—unthinkable. Which means, I say with a leaden heart, your days of hand holding with your boy are probably numbered.

You’re certainly panicking, wondering, What do I do? How to cure this terrible ache? Yoga? A hike? A friend? Admit that this is one of those days you desperately wish you had a nine-to-five job, that you were in a rush, that you were part of the money-making population who are forced to stuff this kind of thing into a secret pouch in order to make it through the day. Buck up. Remember that you and all your time are envied by them. The trade off is that you don’t get any secret pouch. It’s your job to feel all this. Do not whine about it. Never, ever whine about it.

So, you’re dying a little bit. Thank god you’re still out in the sun. The key here is to stop looking ahead. Quit trying to plan a hike or yoga or a coffee date. Put that phone down; desperate texting isn’t going to do anything except confuse you further. What you want to do here is take another breath and put one foot in front of the other. Maybe get out of the park and get on a sidewalk. Sidewalks are familiar. They lead all the way back to your own last day, the listening walk you took in kindergarten, those final hours before summer. The whack of a tennis ball being hit on the courts across the street. The drone of a lawn mower. The smell of the cut grass, so perfect and juicy and expansive, the very scent of safety. The sweaty hand of your partner—whose hand? Whose?

Take a look at your neighborhood. If you can walk under a tree, do so. A maple is best. What is it about those leaves that creates the sound of silk moving against itself? The broad surface area, the shape of an outstretched palm. This is not the magical flutter of aspens, also a delight. This is the sweet hiss of a giant, with arms as wide as a house. Notice the garden the neighbor makes every year that he then refuses to water. The angry, parched little marigolds glaring from the edge. The unkempt yard of the radio DJ two houses down. On Saturdays, when his front door is open, you can hear all kinds of music coming through the screen. Don’t forget to notice the birds. That soft but somehow stupid coo of the mourning dove that has taken up residence in the neighborhood. At our house, he’s been nicknamed DumDum. If you stare at him long enough in the top of that pine tree, he takes off, the bizarre, hollow sound his wings make.

The next block might be hard; you have to pass the school. Don’t hyperventilate. Of course the sight of the place is going to prod the writhing mass you’re carrying. You’ll want to cry. Probably best not to, but if you need to, morning walks can be for crying. When you can function again, allow yourself to admit something important: in spite of the bitterness caused by being one of about twenty people who do everything in this school of two-hundred-forty, the sleepless nights of hot rage at the kids who have excluded your boy, the shocking worry caused by tests results showing his line of progress angling the wrong way, in spite of all that, you are going to miss this place. One short year from now, you’ll be saying good-bye to this school forever, and that will be worse than now. Take a moment to admit this simple truth: you will miss it. Sometimes the very act of recognizing that you will miss something helps you to miss it a little bit less. I think this is because a mental nod towards the end of an experience or relationship or era, is being a friend to yourself. You are speaking to your future self, preparing to be a better friend when the time comes. Your past, current and future selves are like a huge brood of chicks. Your job is to take care of them all. Let them in, offer them a chair, a drink, a soft place to lie down.

Now, onward. Up the porch steps. As you open the front door to your house, I think it might help to tell yourself one last thing, something significant about children, something I only just thought of. They never stop being those creatures dancing naked in the rain. They are always something to observe and cuddle and rejoice in, protect and help and teach, no matter how old they get.

And if that doesn’t help, if you still don’t know what to do with yourself, go and water the garden. There is nothing in this world that water can’t cure.