High School Again

My youngest child, Amy, graduated from the University of Michigan last weekend. To honor this milestone, I am posting an article I wrote in 2010, a few months before she started high school.

Due to circumstances beyond my control — except a spectacular talent for scanning a roomful of men and choosing the one most likely to make me insecure, lonely, bankrupt, furious, and fat — I have been married three times.  My first husband was just for practice.  The second was for discovering the entire geography of hell. The third was for love and forever.

All three marriages involved some form of reproduction, so the spacing of my children is slightly irregular.  My son is 39, my twin daughters are 29, and my daughter Amy is thirteen.  By the time Amy goes to college, I will have had a child at home for about 6,000 years.

My life feels like three separate lifetimes that constantly bump into each other.  I once discussed a social studies assignment with the mother of Amy’s friend and then realized I was talking about homework from 1978.  I told Amy to practice the piano, forgetting that it was her twin sisters who took lessons, and that we don’t have a piano. I remember the size 4 satin suit I wore to my son’s high school graduation. When Amy graduates, I’ll be wearing an oxygen mask and diapers.

I wish I had the same consuming passion for Amy’s finger painting, nosebleeds, birthday parties, book reports, and low self-esteem that I had for her siblings.  Although I never say it out loud, “Been There, Done That,” is my current mothering style. And it was the sum total of my thoughts a few days ago when I took her to High School Orientation Night for incoming freshmen.

We were handed Welcome Packets the size of the Oxford English Dictionary.  Then we sat down for an information extravaganza that included such breathtaking topics as “Adjusting to New Challenges,” and “Your Student Faces the Future.”  The (Superintendant/Vice-Principal/Curriculum Coordinator/ Student Advisory Chairman) spoke flatly, told jokes that weren’t funny, and cited statistics that were incomprehensible.  The “Here’s to High School” DVD had technical problems.  And Amy neither listened to nor cared about what was said by anyone.

I can always tell which parents are sending their first-borns to high school.  There is a nervous eagerness on their faces that approaches lunacy.  They pay attention.  They take notes. They ask questions. They follow along with every page in the packet. They’re positively manic with good intentions.

I can also tell which parents are here with their youngest children.  They’re asleep. They’ve lost their packets. They are only here because they didn’t have clean tennis shorts. But that doesn’t mean they’re bad parents. Or neglectful.  Or unloving. It just means they’ve Been There and Done That. And they know something the scribbling, questioning, pondering, enraptured parents do not: almost none of this makes any difference.

Because if their child fails a test, it isn’t fatal.  If he or she drops AP Calculus for Introduction to Photography, it’s not the end of the world. If someone’s son doesn’t make the basketball team, he’s probably not scarred for life.  If a noble-sounding service project is really just six girls watching Glee together, it’s not a felony.  A girl or boy who doesn’t go to the Junior Prom will not become a serial killer. And the student who doesn’t get into her first-choice college has not come to the end of the road.

Life is longer than high school.  Failure and disappointment reach everyone. A son or daughter can stumble, bumble, and fumble without eternal consequences.  Which is why I played Sudoku on my iPad during the program. And when it ended, I  took Amy to get Peppermint Stick ice cream, then drove home, thoroughly uninformed, to my rumpled stew of déjà vu.