Responsibilities

Today was the first day of the new school year for two of my grandchildren and millions of other children from coast to coast.  Maddie, fifth grade, and Jack, first grade, headed off cheerfully with clothes picked for the occasion . . .  and colorful face masks.

They don’t mind masks. In the spring Jack often left his mask on at our house after school because he ”likes wearing it.”  Perhaps he imagined himself as a small marauder,  although assuming the contents of a 6 year-old mind is a fool’s errand.  

Each new school year brings ever fainter - and likely less reliable - memories of childhood.

My mother was not excessively attentive to benchmarks or occasions, but even she, without her characteristic impatience, always took my sister and me clothes shopping for the start of school.  I remember specific choices from grammar school days, always opting for whatever I thought would help me fit in, as my mother pressed in vain for the more practical or inexpensive options.  

I can still feel the stiff newness of the plaid shirt collar and the sharp crease in the chinos.  For many years, without fail, I began school with a new pencil case, a three ring notebook and a lunchbox with a matching thermos.  In each new year, so finely equipped, anything was possible.

This annual ritual is not just fodder for grandparent nostalgia.  Each school year is a new beginning - a reset - when you can begin with determination, your past record as freshly scrubbed as your face.   For me, an impulsive, immature boy who preferred humor to homework, this would be the year when I would complete more assignments than I would lose, when my notebook would be perfectly organized by subject, and I would fill each section with precise writing and infallibly accurate calculations. 

And I would do exactly those things until about September 15th, after which time there would be holes in the knees of my chinos and my three ring notebook would have doodles on the cover and sheets of pristine notebook paper in all sections.  The most memorable elements of fourth grade were; the clock, a scientific miracle that took one hour to move the minute hand one tick mark; the inkwell which taunted me with its proximity to Anne Hathaway’s braids; and Mrs. Johnson’s breasts, which were improbably tucked into the belt of her flowery dress.

By the time consequences of my inattention, in the form of report cards that invariably began, “Steven is a nice boy, but . .  . ” arrived, I’d make a few sincere, frantic efforts to catch up.  But inevitably it was too much.   The guilt and shame of these small failures were soon hidden by a growing capacity for denial and an endless enthusiasm for making others laugh, the games in gym or at recess, and the nearly constant opportunities for baseball and other sports well into the evening.  And when alone at night, I would read and reread every issue of Sports Illustrated, perhaps the primary influence on my early literary life.  Most of the writing was vastly superior to my textbooks, although I admit that I seldom gave the textbooks a fair shot.

By mid-year, being left hopelessly in the wake of the ever-moving lesson plans, I would begin formulating my determination to rectify these matters in the next year.  The relief brought on by this resolution allowed me a guilt-free spring knowing; #1, catching up was impossible and #2, next year would be THE year.

Pardon the excessive reminiscence, but we grandparents and parents would do well to remember the complex dynamics at play as children begin their school years.

Although we had a few air raid drills and my parents warned against the evils of Tricky Dick Nixon, life was easier then.  (I can still hear my father’s rich baritone singsonging, “Ike and Dick are bound to click, but if Ike gets sick we’re stuck with Dick.”)

As I looked at photos of Maddie and Jack before they headed to school, I felt a rush of protective love.  We have made a mess of things and I despair at the world we’re bequeathing them.  As their school year began, smoke from rampant wildfires obscured the view of the Rockies that should be the school’s backdrop.  We have neglected and abused the environment to the point that our children and grandchildren may never know Earth as we have known it. The state of our democracy is such that both Ike and Dick look good in hindsight.  Any world where Richard Nixon looks good is a pretty dark place.

However the school year goes for Maddie, Jack and millions of other children, they will have another fresh start next year.  We will not.

A Vermont acquaintance, the late poet grandmother Grace Paley, wrote in her poem “Responsibility:”

There is no freedom without fear and bravery there is no freedom unless / earth and air and water continue and children / also continue

It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman to keep an eye on this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be / listened to this time.

For children to continue; for freedom, earth and air and water to continue, we must be fearful and brave.  We do not have the luxury of time or the innocence of youth.

It is our responsibility - all of us - to be poets and women, to keep an eye on the world for our children, and cry out like Cassandra until we’re heard.