For a few years I managed to avoid going to “Back to School Night.” I thought it was something optional, something most parents dismissed in favor of an evening at home. My own mother never went. I think she thought it was too hard to meet all of the teachers for her six children in such a short time span, and besides, she knew the teachers from having other kids in their classes from previous years. I do not have six children, but just assumed the universal adaptability of this excuse, and happily stayed home when my daughter was in kindergarten and first grade…until I got caught.
She came off of the bus sobbing. While this is not unusual, as my children often need to unload the day’s problems and their backpacks and empty snack wrappers onto me while standing at the bus stop, on that particular day in first grade my daughter was already having a full-blown sob-fest while descending the bus stairs. “Everyone else’s mom left a note at their desk for them, and I didn’t get one!” Yup. I am a bad mom.
“I’ll write you a note now!” I offered. But this wasn’t good enough. It wouldn’t erase the feeling of looking around the room, watching the other children excitedly see the “I love you!” notes their moms had written, and searching endlessly for one for herself…for one that didn’t exist. Had I known that this would have been a by-product of “Back to School Night,” I still would not have gone, but at least I could have mailed her a letter to school in advance, or asked the teacher to tape a lollipop to her desk.
“Why didn’t you go to the school last night?” she cried, and I was thankful nobody else was at the stop, witnessing the punishment for my crime. The next day, I put a few notes into her lunchbox, cut them into the shape of a heart, decorated the interior of her lunchbox with an entire pack of stickers, and threw in a few chocolate kisses. The teshuva process was quite intense. I think I was forgiven.
But since then, I always try to go. I think I accidentally missed my son’s kindergarten “Back to School Night,” but I did go to my daughter’s in second grade, and made sure to leave the longest note on earth. I skipped a nursery one this year because I already know the teachers and the curriculum, and I’m pretty sure they don’t ask you to write notes for their non-reading students. Can’t get caught there.
However, at this year’s first grade event, I got stuck in traffic and came a few minutes late. I snuck into the class and sat hunched at the tiny table, listening to the teacher dance and sing her way through the curriculum. As she twirled around the room, I felt my adult-onset-ADD kick in and I was itching to reach for my phone for instant entertainment, or to at least take a quick nap on the kiddie-table. She seemed like a stellar educator and I knew within the first five minutes that my son would have a great year with her. I just had to sit through another 20 minutes of it.
I really felt proud of myself that I attended, and made sure to announce to my son the next morning that I had met his teachers, and they seemed so great, and why didn’t he sing all of those songs he was learning? I had a blissful day while he was at school, really believing that I was making strides in my parenting, but at some point during dinner that night he said to me, “Why didn’t you write me a note in my class yesterday? You could just take a piece of paper and write something to me. . . .”
“There was no paper,” I said, cutting him off, trying to find a logical explanation for why I didn’t write a note. I hadn’t seen any, and no teacher ever announced, “Now is the time to write a letter to your child.” Had some parents done this on their own initiative? Is this a “Back to School Night” minhag that I am not aware of? I tried to think back to the evening. Maybe there was letter-writing time before I had arrived. Or maybe it happened while I was staring mesmerized at the clock, or sneaking furtive glances at my i-Phone. Maybe I had napped, and I just didn’t remember.
By Sarah Abenaim
Tonight is “Back to School Night” for third grade. I will be the first one there, sitting in the front row, with a pre-typed, 10-paged, double-spaced love letter for my daughter, and I will tape a king-sized Twix bar to it and somehow find a way to the make the whole thing glow in the dark. I just can’t afford to mess this up.
