Read about college "helicopter parents" in the paper this week, parents of college age kids who can't let go. Remembered my first day of kindergarten. My mother walked me there, and I learned the way. The teacher asked me for my name, and I stood and spelled out the ten-letter French-Canadian last name, as I'd seen my parents doing on the phone, at the bank. I was aware that this was unusual when I looked at the teacher's face when I was done, but with no real idea of why. The smallest girl in class felt ill, and rested her head in my lap as we sat on the floor in the circle.
I loved school, always did, even though there were bullies who tormented me. Because there was no father there, and it was the one place where smart counted, and smart was the one thing I knew I was good at. I dove in and reveled in knowing.
On my second day, I walked myself, and never looked back. I got driven, later, for other schools too far to easily walk to, but I left my parent's home at the car door. Whatever the mean girls did to me was easier to deal with that what my parents dished out, and school, I knew, was my ticket out, to freedom and the wild world.
I think my mother would have preferred me to hate school, as she so often told me she did. As imperfect a refuge as one could settle for, but I was passionate about understanding it all, knowing it all, so that I could escape. And so that I could understand. A trial to prove myself.
2 comments:
I wasn't challenged sufficiently in the earlier years of my education. This didn't play out so well later on when the learning became more challenging.
In high school the easiest and most convenient way for me to get to school was to take the train - this involved being separate from the home and on my own and it was with ease.
I did not grow up in as abhorrent a family condition as you appear to have done, fortunately.
Phil,
I'm very glad that schoolwork really got difficult for me about 4th grade, and I had to learn how to study. I was capable of top scores, but they never came automatically or easily. Partly to do with having a very good, parochial school, no such thing as an easy A.
Taking the train to and from work when I lived in Boston was such a blessing, time to wake up, time to wind down and daydream.
I really love to hear about people who had good, loving families, restores my faith in humans as a species. That my prickly parents were just a bad draw of luck. Could have been far worse.
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