My son returned to school this week - a new year beginning again already. I drove him to school on his first day back yesterday and as we drove up Dorchester Road we passed quite a few 'newbies'. These are the new Year 7 pupils who were just about to start senior school. Most of them looked absolutely tiny, wearing blazers much too big for them and with shiny new shoes and hair cuts. They looked far too young and too small to be going to 'big school' and my heart sympathised for them.
James commented on how little they looked and as I looked at him in his new blazer, sat beside me, nearly as tall as me now, I suddenly had a flash back of making that same journey to the school 2 years ago. With a boy much smaller, with a blazer much too big for him and a shiny new hair cut. His legs shook with nerves all the way and I felt so helpless. He was making that huge leap from small junior school to very large senior school and he had to make it alone. Unlike junior school, parents are very definitely not allowed to get out of their car and wait with their child. Being seen with your parent at senior school is likely to get one at least enormously made fun of, or even beaten up for being such a Mummy's boy, so I would never (even if James let me) place such stigma on him. So I had to just stop the car and let him get out on his own. I desperately wanted to go in with him and give him a hug, but managed to maintain cool parent control and keep things light, determined to make it as easy for James as possible. Then, just as I was fighting back the tears, James demanded I stop the car there as he had just spotted 3 boys he knew. With that, he grabbed his bag, threw a casual 'see ya mum' behind him and ran off without so much as a backward glance. I drove the rest of the way to work in tears, the image of my baby boy in his slightly too big uniform making his way to that huge school without me.
I spent the morning at work worrying about whether he was managing to find his way around the buildings, whether he was being bullied, whether he had managed the canteen at lunch time, etc. It was with some trepidation that I went to collect him at the end of the first day, wondering how he had fared. Ha! I might have known! I was waiting in my car, scanning the sea of faces of the pupils as they left the school building. Then, I spotted him. Strolling casually out of the doors, shirt untucked from his trousers, tie undone, blazer tossed over his shoulders in a debonair fashion, sauntering across the school yard exchanging banter with lots of students both his age and older, looking like he owned the joint!! He got in the car - 'alright mum?' - and I asked him how it had been. He was so enthusiastic and said he only got lost twice and that he knew loads of his fellow students from various out of school clubs. I heaved a secret sigh of relief - he would be fine.
So now here we are 2 years later and he has had, let's face it, a rather difficult summer having lost his aunty. But he has just come back from his second day back really proud at having been put into the top set in English. He has already lost his tie. His shirt is already untucked and his trousers already appear to look scruffy. Life goes on.
I started back at work this week and it is very busy. I spent today at my desk mainly in tears - I have good and bad days. Luckily my desk means I sit with my back to the room, so I am able to hide this (I think!). I am incredibly tired as for the last week I am taking til about 3 am to get to sleep every night, so I am feeling rather run down. But life has to go on. I have to pay my mortgage and bills and make lunches for my son. I get up in the morning and put on makeup and my mask for the day. I found myself practising smiling in the mirror the other day as I was convinced that mine had turned into a grimace.
Normality has to return. But I so wanted to phone my sister to share James's success at school and to find out how my little niece and nephew are getting on at school. I want to share life's normality with my sister and it is so so unfair that she is unable to experience these things. She never got to see her little girl start 1st grade and to share that with me.
Normality and new beginnings for many and we should appreciate these moments for the major triumphs that they are. A friend of mine recently commented that she was more affected about turning the big 50 than she thought she was going to be. I told her to look on each year as a blessing she is lucky enough to have. I am trying to do the same.
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