August 24, 2006

Confessions from the Carpool

Back-to-School Blues?
Or More Like Tickled-Pinks?

By Shana McLean Moore
Times Columnist

It’s that time of year again, and the feelings are bittersweet, aren’t they? You know, something like the taste of a summer strawberry dipped in dark chocolate, or the last sip of strong coffee where the teaspoon of sugar settled.

Just as our taste buds welcome the soothing union of contrasting flavors, our mixed feelings about the kids going back to school hang in balance like two chubby kids on a seesaw, delighted, for the moment, to be neither the launcher nor the launchee.

On the upswing, if we’re really being honest, we’re ready for our children’s minds to be stimulated again. Yes, one can argue that video games and sibling brawls are, in fact, a stimulus, but we parents are looking for something that won’t seal their destiny to be featured on an upcoming episode of “COPS.”

If you’re like me, your intentions were as golden as the tan you now sport, after avoiding time spent indoors practicing pesky math facts or learning something cerebral in a book each and every day of summer.

Of course, I never planned for this to be an exact replica of the summers of my own youth, where kids would be allowed to “just be kids.” But it was a pool date here, a Raging Waters trip there, and some Great America VIP passes I was determined to get my money’s worth out of. And now, here my family sits, tanner if not dumber, than we were in June.

Unless, of course, arguing raises your IQ, because we clearly excel in that arena. Last I heard, though, speech and debate is only offered in high school, and we’re still a school or two away from that. But once we impress our daughters’ new teachers with the depth of their skills, there’s always a chance our girls will be treated like the mini-Mensa members who are bused over to the high school for calculus.

Regardless of which campus they wind up on, I join many of you in looking forward to regaining the sense of community we all get by plugging back into our local schools. Between varying vacation schedules, house guests and summer camps, it’s easy to fall out of touch with the friends and acquaintances that add so much to your daily life. I think the kids feel it, too. I mean, why bicker with your sister when you have 29 fellow classmates to pick on…er, play with?

And then there’s the thrill of fresh starts. Everything from the pointy new pencils and tatter-free folders to new friends and the teacher’s blank grade book, which helps the new school year re-kindle our sense of optimism.

Even the reluctant teens come back re-charged in the fall, claiming to have “turned a new leaf.” Their parents quietly hope they are referring to a leaf of paper that they’ll actually write their homework assignments down on this year. Somehow, though, they squelch their cynical thoughts through the month of September, believing this really will be Johnny’s year for popularity, perfect attendance and a 4.0 average.

But as we all know, every teeter eventually must totter. It simply boils down to physics and potty breaks. And the downside of sending the kids back to school, of course, is the chaos that invades your calendar and your coronary ventricles. As soon as that first night of homework coincides with soccer practice for one child and a piano lesson across town for the other, it’s like the feeling you used to get when your seesaw partner abandoned ship without so much as a “See ya!” Your stomach drops, you plummet downward, and you quickly suffer an achingly familiar pain in your posterior.

Comfort, however, is not far away. It lies in the six-hour reprieve from the ‘twenty-four-sevenness’ of parenting that the school day provides us grown-ups. While our children are having their brains filled with interesting facts and figures, our feet can dangle in the breeze as the wooden plank of our seesaw starts to rise while we take a little time to pursue something we may have neglected all summer: adult interests.

Shana McLean Moore lives in Almaden Valley and is the co-author of “Femail: A Comic Collision in Cyberspace” and the author of “Caffeinated Ponderings on Life, Laughter & Lattes.” For more information visit Moore’s Web site at www.caffeinatedponderings.com.