Walking through the aisles of Target for diapers, I turned a corner and wham! There was the back to school display! So many emotions! Where I once would be buying supplies for myself as a student, I was now buying diapers. Where I once would be purchasing items for my classroom with my own money, I was pondering which cup would be best for my son. Where I once found so much joy, I now found myself feeling all of the things-excitement, happiness, nostalgia, sadness. The emotions of to back-to-school have always been tangled and always will be; seasons change and so do school displays.
As a kid, I loved school supply shopping-the rattle of new pencils in their box, the smell of plastic folders, the potential art in a box of Crayolas. Sign. Me. Up. These supplies were going to rocket my learning and be the background to a year’s worth of activities. Even now, holding a new notebook shoots my brain into overload at the potential for what could be written. The possibilities within that bulleted supply list made me giddy. But I also dreaded going back to school. I not-so-secretly didn’t mind homework and studying; it was always fun. But I did love my time at home. The summer before my third grade year began, I even cried and hid because if I went to school every day, I wouldn’t be able to watch the Price is Right. I suppose it would be hard to learn multiplication tables and guess the This or That price at the same time. Evenstill, I loved school but dreaded the transition period back into “reality.”
Then I became a teacher, and the emotions of a back-to-school display got a little more complicated. Pencils, scissors, glue sticks: Ooo! Wouldn’t that pencil cup be just perfect by the sharpener? “Yes please!” What if each of my students had a specific folder for just their vocabulary? “Let’s just add twenty single colored folders to my cart.” Are my glue sticks from last year dried up? “I should probably get a few more for our projects just in case.” Students, my kids for nine months, would use these, learn with these, grow with these ordinary things. Those parts of the display made my heart leap.
But then the details kicked in. Wait…if this display is out, that means that I flip one page of my calendar, and there it is: the first day of school. While teaching was truly my passion, summers were a blast. Traveling, sleeping in, working on my classroom with no direct deadlines; all of these things were fun! But a supply list now meant that mornings would start earlier, days would be longer, and the hard work of fulfilling all of the roles a teacher entails would begin. It was all beautiful work, laced with fun and triumph, but it was hard. There it is again: the tug of war of emotions, all prompted by everyday items.
And then there is my present-neither a student nor a teacher. My love for learning and teaching did not go away just because I decided to stay home with my son. I still long for a new box of pencils, though I do not need them. Sheet protectors make me want to print new activities and organize them in a binder just because. The prospect of a new lunchbox suddenly makes those leftovers seem not so bad. “Fine,” I’ll tell myself. My heart feels both sadness and joy just as it did as a kid seeing the rainbow of supplies.
Looking forward, I know that sending my sweet boy to school will hold more emotions than I can speak to now, and I may cry all of the kinds of tears at once. School for him will hopefully bring the same joy it brought me: friendships, creativity, learning, and memories. If he cries because he can’t watch Drew Carey tell the contestants to spin the wheel, I will be qualified to coach him through it. If he does not want to start getting up earlier again, I’ll grumble with him, and we’ll make the best of the mornings. Those mixed up feelings will hopefully unjumble, and he can get in a groove of loving the learning.
The only thing I know to do now is ride the wave of the back-to-school emotion, and I think that’s okay. There’s an ebb and flow of excitement no matter which season I’m in. So, yes, I am walking through Target to get diapers and walking past the school supplies with no intention of actually purchasing, but that is perfectly okay. My sweet boy and I will read, paint, and learn in our own way at home right now. And I will do it all without buying a single new school supply. Well…maybe just one new notebook.
