No page is thick enough, however, to hide what is written at
the top of next week. School starts Monday. I am not ready for this. And, yet,
I am so ready for this, for a return to something like normalcy after a summer
of tumultuous fun. Ready or not, here it comes.
Since becoming a mother, I’ve felt more often than not that
I am flying by the figurative seat of my pants. My husband would guffaw at
this. He knows I like to have a plan – along with a list. But with kids, you
kind of need both: a plan of action and the willingness to amend that plan as it is
implemented. In short, my plan is no longer so firmly in my control; sometimes
we have to alter the course mid-plan to make a wardrobe change or clean up a
mess or bandage a scraped knee.
I am getting better, by necessity, at going with the flow. At
least sometimes that is true.
Right now, with the first day of school looming on the very
near horizon, I feel as if I should have a plan. But I don’t, not really. I’ve
been too frenzied to make one. Sure, my kids’ backpacks are hung from their
hooks in the kitchen, filled with the supplies their teachers have requested
for the first day of school. I have given some half-distracted thought to the
snacks and I will pack into lunchboxes that first day. Everyone has sneakers that
fit and a selection of clothes first-day-of-school suitable.
But I still feel like my world is spinning with summer diversions,
sporadically completed work, and the household chaos that comes with having three
kids home constantly – at least when we’re not out playing or exploring. The
front porch is a jumble of beach towels and drying bathing suits. There are
tennis racquets and golf tees thrown into the car, bikes and soccer balls and
forgotten gardening tools strewn about the yard. Legos and art supplies and
books litter every room of the house, mingling with my notes for this story or
that, scribbled on scraps of paper and misplaced in the wake of activity.
There is no planning amid such chaos, and any list I manage
to jot down is soon lost.
I am waiting for that time when the kids are in school, that
stretch of hours each day, to regroup. Then I’ll take a good, hard look at my untidy
list on that hidden page and figure out what to do first. I keep telling myself
that once I can return to a normal schedule, I will have plenty of time to
catch up – on the work that’s been piling up, on the clutter that has creeped
into every corner of the house, and on making a plan for getting it all done.
Of course I’ll also have to plan for homework help and dinner prep and how to
keep two dozen kids interested and learning and having fun at soccer practice.
Next week we jump from wavering summer plans to more rigid
fall ones. From barefoot soccer in the yard to shin guards and cleats and lined
fields. From pure pleasure reading to homework assignments. From mostly hanging
with the kids to packing them off in the morning and returning to my coffee and
my keyboard – and an impossibly quiet house.
No matter how well packed the backpacks are and how
carefully selected the First Day outfits, my children’s return to school always
hits me like an accidental punch to the gut. Somehow I’m never quite ready for
how much older they seem that first day of school than they did the year before,
and how lonely it is returning home without them.
That quiet house is what I need to get back to crossing
things off the list, but I’m also, just a little bit, dreading the quiet. I
know from past first-day-of-school experiences that I’ll get used to it again
pretty quickly, that soon I’ll settle into the school year flow. On that first
day, though, I’m never quite ready. No matter; school starts Monday. Ready or
not, here it comes.
Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the August 28, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.
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