When I was in school, every day was like a first day of school. I could not get breakfast down thinking about what might go wrong.
The girls in my class could be mean. I was small in stature and intensely shy, an easy target. I did not do well on standardized tests. Teachers were slow to stand up for me—kind of like when you are older, sick, in the hospital, and the odds are against recovery. Would I be bullied? Did I do the right homework? Was it perfect? Did I have to play sports? (I was “so slow.”) Would I get “squished” on the bus?
I only looked forward to two things: music class, where everyone got a chance to sing, and I knew I could carry a tune, and listening to Miss Spear’s stories of being interned as a Christian Missionary in a prisoner of war camp in China during World War II. Miss Spear was The Shipley School’s Headmistress in my early school years.
Oh, and I liked making applesauce in kindergarten.
When learning became associative rather than rote as I got older, I started doing well in school, despite well-reported, low expectations. I had my first inkling that school could be different. I could learn. It could even be fun. I don’t think Dr. Seuss wrote If I Ran the School. It was simmering in my unconscious until I founded Wonder & Wisdom’s after school program. You better believe we paid attention to extending welcome.
Twenty years later, I still feel drawn to show up on the first day of school here in my small town, Greensboro, Vermont. I stand in for children whose parents are absent and stand up for children who got squished on the bus. I take the hands of the youngest who have never been to school before and discover other children are already friends, excluding them.
Last year, 2018, the first day of school was on my Mother’s Birthday, August 27. It would have been her 100th birthday. I wore a T-shirt that had been hers. It had mosquitoes on it and said, “I gave in Vermont.” The children who could read thought it was funny. It gave children who were just learning their letters a chance to ask what it said. All children in Greensboro know a mosquito when they see it in August.
When I give by showing up, I feel like someone takes my hand and leads me there. I wonder if Grace is guiding me. When a child I have never met before wraps his arms around me and holds on tightly, I am quite sure I feel Her inspiration as I absorb his shallow, fearful breath. I know we will both make it through the first day of school. It’s time for breakfast. Let’s eat.
March 27, 2019