The week before school starts is not so much a week as it is a campaign. There are logistics, supply lines, financial planning, and the kind of last-minute crises you’d expect if we were invading Normandy instead of sending children back to public education. My wife, who teaches, has been moving what I can only describe as an entire school supply section at WalMart into her classroom, one tote at a time. The sheer volume defies reason. I’ve been in that room. It’s like any other classroom. And yet, everything she brings in disappears into it, as though she’s found the doorway to Narnia and is slowly filling it with laminated posters, mechanical pencils, and paper towels.
Several of the kids apparently decided to spend the summer growing like bean sprouts, because suddenly every shoe in the house was a size too small. This required an emergency pilgrimage to various stores where, I’m convinced, the school shoe market is run by the same people who control diamond prices. Except that diamonds last longer than three months before someone’s toes start curling over the edge.
Then the washing machine joined the back-to-school festivities. It began flashing cryptic error codes: strings of letters and numbers that looked like they’d been randomly assigned by a drunk Soviet engineer. I spent hours disassembling it, crawling around on the floor, making little puddles of water like a human fountain. The machine beeped at me softly, as if to say, “I know, buddy. This life thing is hard.”
That’s when Eliott wandered in.
“Need some help, Dad?” he asked, in the same tone you might use with a neighbor struggling to carry in a heavy bag of mulch.
We ran through possible fixes together, searched online for what I imagine is the internet’s only Mandarin-to-COBOL translation tool, and, miracle of miracles, got it working again.
Eliott grinned, and in that grin I saw the problem with time: it’s rude. He’s a junior now. We’re entering the season of SAT prep books, college tours, and financial aid calculators that give you an ulcer just by looking at them. He doesn’t need me the way he used to. These days, our talks are less father-and-son and more man-to-almost-man, which is fine, except I didn’t realize how much I’d miss being indispensable.
Micaiah isn’t far behind. He had his sports physical yesterday. Six-foot-one, 250 pounds, and trying football this year. He’s a freshman in high school, and he’s already enrolled in a Health Science program that will have him spending part of his day at a community college in two years. He’s barely started and he’s already halfway gone.
When they’re little, you assume their need for you is permanent. The constant “Dad, Dad, Dad” is exhausting, yes, but it’s also the air you breathe. Then one day, without much warning, you look around and realize you’re standing there holding a half-empty oxygen tank.
This morning, for the first time in years, I didn’t have to bellow through the house like a deranged town crier to get them moving. Eliott and Micaiah were up when I was. Dressed. Ready. Helping the younger kids find shoes and zip backpacks.
“If you make Dad late,” Micaiah warned, “he will throw you to school instead of driving you.” Everyone laughed, which I took as a good sign that my children still find me occasionally funny instead of merely annoying.
We have one more First Day of School like this with everyone at home, all five kids crammed into the same daily launch sequence of chaos and misplaced clothes. One more morning when someone screams, “I can’t find my pants!” and someone else, without missing a beat, shouts back, “Then go without them!”
After that, the house will start emptying. After that, they’ll be gone.
That’s the way it’s supposed to go. It’s not tragic. It’s just different. And I’ll still be here, fixing the washing machine when it breaks, deciphering its cryptic messages. Only instead of a kid beside me with a grin and a solution, it’ll just be me and the soft beep of a machine saying, “Yeah. I feel your pain, buddy.”