I am crying on what is normally the happiest day of the year for me.
I’m not talking about Christmas, with the mayhem of four generations unwrapping presents simultaneously, or repeatedly sneaking tiny slices of my stepmother’s rum-laden fruit cake.
And I’m not talking about my birthday. Some would argue that my birthday should be my happiest day, but only three other people know the truth. After my sixth birthday, I was content to play the game and blow out the candles and make a wish that never came true.
No, today I am bawling because it’s the first day of school and I’m not teaching for the first time in over thirty-five years. My body wracks in convulsions as the dam holding back my emotions breaks apart, and I am swept away in the flood.
My husband, Ken, put on the coffee this humid, late summer morning. He filled his thermos and then drove a couple of towns over to the big box home improvement store to get materials he needs for his latest customer. He is Milford’s most trusted remodeler and does renovations like nobody’s business. The city folks line up months in advance and pay big-city money for his craftsmanship on their fixer-uppers. He offered to stick around this morning, knowing how difficult today would be for me. We’ve been married for thirty-three years, so he knows my moods by now. I declined, but how I wish he found an excuse to tarry. Would I have kept up a brave face had he stayed, or would I have melted into his sinewy yet gentle arms, sobbing into his flannel work shirt?
Everything was as it should be this summer, like it had been for the last three and a half decades, until last Monday night—or was it early Tuesday morning? It’s been a blur.
The school board was under siege by angry parents with the union attorneys giving the town folks all the ammunition. In the end, after a bitterly contested vote, the board decided to close Milford Elementary and eliminate seven teaching positions, custodians, and the school nursing office. It was not lost on the agitated crowd that the principal, who was not in the union, was spared and would become more overhead at the regional school district’s administration building outside of town.
I was the senior of two kindergarten teachers in the district. I came to Milford as a student intern my last year at college and taught this magical grade, never having the desire to teach any other grade or subject. Where else do you get nap time after lunch? I would smile at those academics who thought I should strive to teach more erudite classes like chemistry at the academic high school or culinary at the vocational-technical school. I taught kindergarten for thirty-five years and treated it like a calling. Sometimes it could be monotonous, like on beautiful summery days in June added to make up for snow days, but mostly, I couldn’t believe they paid me a living wage with benefits and the entire summer off for doing what I loved to do. I was excited about going to school every day.
Everyone expected I would exert my hard-earned seniority to keep my job, but I spoke in a clear, unwavering voice. I said Christine Flaherty was a fine kindergarten teacher, and at twenty-four, she had the energy and qualifications to carry on the legacy started by Emelina Bidwell seventy-five years earlier. I had brought Christine along the way Emelina taught me, and it was time for fresh blood to take over. I said that out loud, and in the crowd, I spotted my now newly minted centenarian mentor Emelina beaming.
So, I stunned everybody, including myself, by offering to take the golden parachute package and be laid off in place of my protégé.
Christine’s job was safe. I promised to fill in when she needed me, given that she was pregnant with her second. Afterwards, Christine and her husband, Ron, a former student, each hugged me unabashedly, while over their shoulders, I received the stink eye from our union rep. Union rules stipulated last hired, first fired. I was bucking the union. I shrugged. Whaddya gonna do in a small town?
The closing of the school was a shock, although it shouldn’t have been. Declining enrollments while trying to maintain an aging facility were not new to the folks here. Church congregations and their elders had faced the same problems, and several beautiful houses of worship sat shuttered.
The school board failed to consider the nostalgia of a small-town school where generations of taxpayers had attended. I paid little attention to the too little, too late calls to demand a referendum. I had a garden to weed, tomatoes to can, and an upstairs bedroom to repaint. So, I kept myself busy as the week flew by.
Parents know what it’s like to put their kid on the school bus for their first school day. For some of the children, already veterans of one or two day-care facilities, the separation is no big deal, but for others it is traumatic for both the child and the parents. They had been inseparable since the child’s birth. The kids can pick up on the parents’ separation anxiety too and feed off it.
On the first day of school, I would welcome the kids and the parents to kindergarten. Many of the recent years’ parents had been my students, and without exception, they told their children that when they were in my class; they loved it.
For many children, the first day of school can be awful. It was my job to make it awesome. Whether I sat on a chair in a circle or on the floor that first day, I made sure they did not feel abandoned, and they knew this was a safe place for them to make friends. No one should be terrified by their first day in school. The importance of making the children feel welcome on their first day was never lost on me. I wasn’t there this morning for them, and I could feel the ache in my gut like I had eaten bad shellfish.
I am Mrs. Strong to most of the people in town, Gwen to my friends and colleagues, and Gwendolyn to my husband on those rare occasions when he is cross with me. Today, I am a ship in a tempest, without a rudder, breaking apart on the rocky coast.
What am I going to do?
