She told me months ago she wanted to walk to school. Trying to explain to a four-year-old that it is almost two miles with intermittent sidewalks was to no avail. Thanks to a particularly annoying cartoon, she had it in her mind that all children walk to school their first day. So at 7 a.m. she climbed into the same stroller she rode in when she was a newborn, and we headed down the street.
The morning is beautifully soft and cool. She shivers and says she’s cold. As we walk past older children waiting for the bus she waves hello. She’s unusually quiet for most of the walk and lets me do the talking. To cheer her up, I stop at The Galaxy and buy us a Dr. Pepper to share. She grins from ear to ear and I know if she remembers anything about this morning, it will be the Dr. Pepper.
As we make our way up Main Street I tell her about my granddaddy, Pa Vernon. Pa Vernon was a tall, stern man. He used to drive me to school in his old hay-hauling truck. He drove excruciatingly slowly down the curvy roads. After he dropped off my little brother at elementary school, it would be just the two of us. I was his “Honey Child,” and for the rest of the ride, I would make up songs and sing them to him.
He never laughed or made fun of my songs. Sometimes, if I coughed convincingly enough, he would stop at the gas station and get me a box of cherry-flavored cough drops. The most beautiful mornings of my childhood were spent in the cab of his truck smelling the hay in the floorboard and his sweet chewing tobacco, and watching the morning break.
The skies clear and the morning bustles with traffic. N.C. 211 is blocked off and under construction. I push the stroller up the center line of the deserted highway. As I push her up the hill, the trees are silhouetted against the golden morning sky. I bend down and kiss the top of her head, her coppery brown hair curling in the humidity.
We reach the school, and I walk her to her classroom. I hug and kiss her goodbye and she whispers to me that her throat hurts. I look down into her big brown eyes and recognize the hesitation and fear that comes with first tries. I kneel down and tell her that all the children’s throats hurt this morning, and it would get better. She hugs me, and I asked her if she wanted me to stay or go. She tells me to go. I leave just as Jeff and her baby sister come in to tell her goodbye and give me a ride back home.
We walk down the halls draped with colorful flags and bright bulletin boards. I have met the teachers and the principal and know that she is in caring, competent hands. I realize that my throat hurts — the kind of hurt when there are no words to describe how you feel. I hold my youngest daughter tight. She wants to stay. She looks back and asks for her sister. I tell her I want her back, too.
I know that this morning may fade in her memory. That it is only the first school morning of many to come. I will not be there to see her open her lunch box and pull out a pretty card with photographs of her family. I will not be there when her throat hurts and her stomach churns for home. I will not be there when a lesson clicks, and her face lights up with understanding. In giving her her independence there will be hundreds of firsts that I will not be there to share.
But after school, at exactly 2:20, I will be there to catch and once again hold my “Sunshine” in my arms.
Ellen Marcus is an Aberdeen
freelance writer.
