First Day of School: Lesson Learned

This post is neither about my return to school (the J.D. was the final nail in that coffin, may my education RIP), nor my eldest daughter's First Day of School which will not come for a few more (cherished though sure to be fleeting) months. Instead, I share a lesson learned on my First Day of School (which I capitalize because it is more of a THING than most tangible things in this world) as a parent:  Kindergarten Orientation Parents Night.

Credit where it's due - I was totally cool in the weeks, days, even hours leading up to this evening.  I take a modest amount of pride in the fact that I nearly forgot about it all together while I was toiling away at work. Why the ridiculous need to be chill, you might ask. First, any break from my overzealous OCD is a welcome gift. Second, I - in all my kinky-haired, band-playing, early-developing, musical theater-obsessing glory - encountered my fair share of schoolyard taunts back in the day. All in all, I was feeling like my flippancy about the whole "my daughter is entering public school thing" was pretty freakin' fabulous.

Cut to super-parent mode:  Picked up both girls, got them home, fed, bathed, pajama'd, brushed, kissed - just in time for the sitter at 6pm.  "Perfect," I tell the sitter and myself (still riding high on my "cool" wave). "Orientation isn't until 6:45 and we live all of 4 miles away." I decide to use the extra few minutes to freshen up before heading out. I stroll into my bathroom, glance in the mirror, and that's when it happened. Without any hint, any warning at all - I plummet head-first down a time-warping wormhole instantaneously transporting me several decades back, at which point the ensuing inner monologue went something (exactly) like this:

Oh my god. What am I wearing? Is this outfit okay? Do I look too lawyerly? I don't want the teachers to think I'm some kind of elitist lawyer. Wait.  Does this dress cut too low? What if the other parents think I'm dressed too racy for school? Am I going to earn a nickname for that? Whatever, getting late, no time to change, I'll just brush my teeth so I don't get weird looks for smelling like the scraps of ham and cheese I shoved in my mouth while feeding the kids dinner but - wha - what the ... Is that a zit? Nope. That's not a zit. That's TWO zits! On my chin. I haven't had a zit in 20+ years, what kind of sick joke is that? I can't - I just - Okay. I'll take this concealer in the car and deal with it on the way or I'm going to be THAT mom who showed up late. In the car. It's 6:23. Why did I leave so little time? Any traffic and I'll miss - oh, for the love of - did I just miss the road? I just missed the road. I'll take whatever the next road is and figure it out. This looks like the back entrance to the school. Oh, crap - it's the faculty lot. Can I park in the faculty lot? They're going to think I'm some kind of self-entitled snob who thinks I can just park anywhere. But I would have to drive over grass to get to the regular lot. Quick, which reputation will last longer - Entitled Snob or Destroyer of School Property, Entitled Snob or... Yes, Destroyer seems like the wrong way to go. Okay, got a spot. The program probably already started. [Looks at clock.] Only 6:27? Oh. There are other cars here with people waiting in them. Fine, I'm just going to wait too so I'm not the first one in. Oh, there's a mom walking in. I should probably follow her - I've never been in this school, I'm for sure going to be the one to get lost. I'll just wait a few seconds so it doesn't look like I'm following her. Oh gosh. She's walking really fast. Okay, I'm out, but I'm losing her, must walk faster! I've almost caught her and we're inside and -  

My breath catches. The moment I step inside my first daughter's first school for the first time - I immediately snap back to present (and sanity).  It's ... beautiful.  I take a long, deep, zen breath and let the first woman slip away while I pause to soak it all in. The colors on the walls are so vibrant they seem to dance off their surfaces. The air crackles with an electricity that must be the sparks left in the wake of the students. There is an inspired vibe that seems to beckon around every corner, "Come see what I've painted here!" I smile back at the toothless grins on the pictures of the student representatives. My eyes trace the lines of the rainbow-colored words painted on the walls:  Create. Think. Dream.  My pulse settles, my heart swells.  Now THIS is what the First Day of School should feel like. 

Though I'll never know what long-since forgotten teenage version of myself rose from the dead to plague my last 30 minutes, I was not going to let her taint one more minute of this amazing experience - for me or for my daughter. Because although my daughter wasn't there that night (thank god), I realized in that moment how easily old ghosts could slip through the cracks in the years. Ghosts with uncanny abilities to turn your thoughts (and somehow your complexion?) to Yesterday. And my daughter - at the precipice of this once-in-a-lifetime adventure - deserves unhaunted, Today Mom. The mom who confidently enters every room first. The mom who understands that it's the relationships you build on this road, not the cut of the dress you wear while doing it.  (I reserve the right to modify that thought in my daughter's teenage years). The mom who is going to hold her daughter's hand through whatever comes over these next years, encouraging her always to look optimistically toward tomorrow, not over her shoulder at whatever shadow she left behind. And with my own shadow shrugged off and my lesson learned, I marched onward toward the program, looking forward to it all.