An Empty Nester Navigates a School Year Unlike Any Other

Now that schools are back in full swing, I found myself stuck in school-related traffic for a while this week and had a somewhat of an epiphany. It hit me that I have a long and complicated relationship with school buses. Maybe not like the one Chris Farley had in Bill Madison, but complex nevertheless. 

For starters, in 12 years of public school, I never rode in one except for field trips. From elementary through middle and high schools, the Thornton house was always located within whatever distance to the school grounds where the Town of Weymouth figured our comfort wasn't worth the diesel, and we were left to getting there and back on Keds power. By the time I was in my midteens, Brenda from up the street, who was two grades ahead of me and seemed like an adult, used to occasionally see me trudging up up the road and give me a lift. She was cute and smart and tended to wear a low cut peasant blouse under her green Mustang convertible. So if I did have bus service, I'd have torn out the carburetor and disabled the thing just to ride with her for 10 minutes. My point being, life inside those buses was an alien world I only heard stories about. 

And at that time in Massachusetts, most of those were horror stories. Buses became the symbol - as well as the battle ground - of all the strife that was happening in Boston. The city where I was born, but where my mother demanded my father move us out of long before that powderkeg blew up. I didn't fully understand what was going on, growing up like I did in an insular world. (The most ethnic kid in my school was a WASP. I'm not kidding when I say I didn't know what a Protestant was until he told me he doesn't have to go to CCD and explained the basics of the Reformation to me. But just to prove how tolerant I am of others' belief systems, I became friends with this Lutheran radical nevertheless.) All I can tell you is to people who lived through that period of the city's history will never get over what they called "the days of Forced Bussing." And Boston still hasn't lived in down in the eyes of the rest of the country.

As a grown up, school buses became the bane of my existence. For most of my career in the court system, I was assigned to Hingham District, which is located in one of the most affluent towns in the Commonwealth. (Often referred to as Cha-cHingham behind its back.) On my trip through there every morning, I took the scenic route along the side roads through the deep forests and past the farm and State Park. Easily putting mine in the 99th percentile of all commutes in America. 

At least when school wasn't in session. When it was, it became a slog. An interminable crawl done in 25-yard increments. And at every stop, every hot wine mom in her Lulu Lemons and North Face vests would put their precious cherubs on the bus, one at an excruciating time. Then proceed to do the goodbye scene from Casablanca, instead of just going back inside to pop a Xanax and watch Ellen until the landscapers show up and take their shirts off, like a normal rich suburban mom. And in doing so, make late pretty much every day of the school year. Now, a cynical person might point out that I could've solved the problem by simply leaving earlier. Or what in some cultures is referred to as, "on time." But anyone who thinks that never worked for the state. And doesn't know the simple joy of walking in at 8:45 and signing in as 8:30. Or teaching your coworkers the concept of "Jerry's On Time." I was an Officer for the Trial Court; not playing defensive end for Tom Coughlin. 

Anyhoo, that all changed when I had sons. The aggravation of getting stuck behind one of those yellow menaces to me became something else when you see it through the eyes of a talkative 3-year-old in the back seat. To them, it might as well have been a spaceship. The USS Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon. Something wonderous. Something they aspired to. They knew someday they'd be old enough to ride in one every day, make friends, and go on epic journeys into learning or whatever. And that photo above is from the first day of Kindergarten, 2002. That's my older boy, in a Harry Potter backpack grinning and an ear-to-ear grin. Not pictured: His mother holding his infant brother and weeping openly. Not as bad as his father did the previous February when Adam Vinatieri's kick beat the Rams, but a lot.

Let me interject here to point out something I've mentioned before: I have crippling daddy issues. So much so that around this same time in our lives, I took that same son to see Finding Nemo. And the part where Marlin is struggling to send his son off to  school with the other fish hit me right in the 10-ring of my feelings bullseye. Then when he finds Nemo at the end (you don't get a Spoiler warning because Pixar put it right in the title) and the theater got bright all of a sudden, he looked up at me and said, "Dad? Are you crying?" Busted. I went through a mental database search of possible excuse of why a tear would be rolling down my cheek during a cartoon, before deciding every one was actually more pathetic than sobbing about an animated clownfish. So I just opted for, "Just watch your movie, buddy." 

And that movie ends with the last line that I tried to make my mantra for the rest of their childhoods. After finally accepting that he can't keep his son protected inside the family anemone, Marlin sends Nemo off with a, "Go have an adventure."

To me, making that adjustment was the hard part. And in my experience, it's infinitely harder for moms. For the first six months of a child's existence (not to mention their 9-month preseason), they are entirely dependent on their mother. Really, no matter how much the father tries to be involved. Mom is the one responding to their cries, assessing what's wrong, working the problem, and resolving it. But at some point, they have to stop being there every minute of every day. Which is an enormous sacrifice. Jordan Peterson refers to this as "the necessary failure of the good mother." With "failure" meaning she has to let them go and learn to meet their own needs. What the good mother must do. And eventually that means putting them on a huge vehicle operated by some municipal employee and hoping she has given them the tools they need to navigate through the ecosystem that is every child's social circles. 

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That's what I see through the car window now when I'm stuck behind a bus watching younger parents go through what we did. A sense memory kicks in, stronger than any other I've ever experienced. All those mornings standing at the end of the driveway, just talking about … stuff. 

The game last night. Batman. Spongebob impressions. What he's building in Minecraft. The kid with cooties who did something stupid. What we're doing in football practice later. Me dressed for work, holding a cup of coffee. A son wearing the jersey of his favorite athlete of the moment, or dressed in whatever the School Spirit theme of the day is. Holding a rolled up posterboard with the ink still drying from the project he finished at the last minute. Me finally putting him on the bus, and us doing the Big Papi heart-tap-point-to-the-sky thing as it pulls away.

Eventually the squealing brakes and pneumatic hiss of the door opening were replaced by the hum of their own car engines as they drove themselves off to high school. In some safe, practical, high-mileage car that's just decent enough to not make girls think he's a loser, but not flashy enough to attract the attention of cops needing to meet their traffic ticket quota. Or an older SUV their dad upgraded from. But those mornings spent standing with them waiting are what stay with me still. Just hanging out. Us and our long shadows as the sun would be climbing higher above the trees, wishing the morning could somehow last forever. I can feel them more than I can feel the present moment. And I envy the parents who still get to be experiencing it right now. Because I know how incredibly profound that feeling is. And always will be. 

I mentioned in the headline this is a school year unlike any other for us, and it is. Because for the first time since that first bus appeared at the end of our driveway, we don't have a family member in school. The boys are long since out of college. But my devoted Irish Rose just began her retirement from teaching Music in the elementary school. She's not retirement age, necessarily. She just needed out, for her own well being. That job is a lot. She lacks that DGAF gene that I was blessed with during my career in government. And all that dedication to making sure 400-plus kids have great experience and a relationship to the music that's so important to her became a grind. So she's pursuing other things that require less commitment. Less of herself, mind, body and spirit.

And so this year's first day of school didn't involve her getting kids off the bus in the morning, putting them back on in the afternoon. And in between keeping them engaged, inspired, and safe. Both from the usual kid things, but also the unspeakable horrors of an insane world. In other words, she's been on the other side of the equation from where we were for all those years and the parents outside my car windows are. 

It's bittersweet. Going anywhere in the town where she was working is like walking around with Taylor Swift. To the under-10 crowd anyway. A while ago we were out at dinner with her college roommates and got approached by a brother-sister tandem who wanted hellos and hugs. And as she eventually sat back down at the table, the little girl was positively beaming. It was sincerely one of the great things I've ever witnessed in her teaching career. The result of giving lessons and teaching songs and organizing concerts and giving families moments they'll remember the rest of their lives. But still. Like with athletes, it's better to hang it up a year too early than a year too late. 

Where I've landed in all this, now that I officially no longer have a horse in this particular race, is that my relationship with the whole subject is the same thing Don Draper used to describe the Carousel slide projector:

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“Nostalgia - its delicate, but potent. … [I]n Greek, nostalgia literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It let’s us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.”        

To every family with a child in school, cherish these moments. Make the most of them. Make them as happy as possible. They'll be with you forever. And to everyone, thanks for reading this far.  And being patient while I'll work out my issues. I promise I'll get back to the usual claptrap as soon as possible.