I am running full-speed down my street in nothing but my nightgown and slippers, my breasts flailing around like two warring tether balls. I turn and yell “Run faster!” at my daughter, who is openly weeping at my side.
This is not a scene from an apocalyptic nightmare. This is just the second week of school.
Currently, the bus is a full seven minutes early, which is why we are running down our street half-clothed. I catch the bus driver’s eyes in the side-view mirror as he drives away, but he doesn’t even acknowledge us as he speeds away. Fuuuuck, I say to myself internally.
We return to the house, defeated. My living room looks, with no exaggeration, like it has been tossed by the CIA. In the doorway, I trip over my older daughter’s three-ring binder, which she has forgotten at home, and for which she will get written up if I don’t drive it to her. Fuuuuck, I say to myself again internally, and also out loud.
I’ll now have to drive my younger kid to school and then drop off this notebook at the middle school. At best, I’ll be 40 minutes late to work, where I’m already behind.
A week earlier, we were in this very same doorway, taking first day of school pictures. Everyone was all smiles, and my children smelled like fresh milled soap and peppermint. Their hair was smooth and plaited. Their white back-to-school sneakers where blindingly new. Their mostly empty backpacks were light on their shoulders.
Now, it all seemed like a faraway dream.
If the first week of school is about fresh starts, new friends, exciting challenges, and perfectly pink unused erasers, the second week of school is all about cold, hard reality. It’s when you realize that after that fun first week, there’s homework and math quizzes and boredom as far as the eye can see. It’s when you have to fill out exactly 800 school forms, located on four different portals and six different apps, asking for information that only your pediatrician and god knows. It’s when you have to ask yourself how you did it last year: the morning rush, the sports rush, the after school rush, the bedtime rush.
The second week is when the wheels come off. That first week, you made your kids Japanese-style bento lunches, using tiny cookie cutters and fresh ingredients. The second week, you hand your kid a sleeve of pizza-flavored Pringles and a protein bar you find at the bottom of your purse and wish them luck.
It’s just all too much change. Too fast. For you and the kids. Everyone is completely, totally exhausted. A respiratory virus, Lice, and a wild card stomach bug are already circulating through classrooms like wolves. The new bus driver, who is the obvious result of the city’s bus driver shortage, is either 10 minutes late or 10 minutes early, and he looks really exhausted, too.
And socializing all day, every day, after a summer at home is emotionally exhausting, too. Feelings are huge the second week of school, and it’s too bad because there are three times as many errands to run as usual, and where are your freaking shoes? You lost your new shoes?
But I’m not just here to complain. I have a greater message for you that I hope is true. It’s okay to have a shitty second week of school. It’s normal for the wheels to come off. It’s okay if your neighbor saw you running without a bra, it was bound to happen sooner or later, and you know it. You are dealing with a lot, and so are all of the other parents and kids (and teachers and staff and administrators). Everyone else is also fucking up, just as much, if not more, than you are. Other people’s kids are also suddenly crying over nothing and throwing fits out of nowhere, I promise, I saw it in Target in several different departments. Change is really hard. And while it’s exciting at first, it’s always followed by a time of hard, rough adjustment to the new normal. But don’t worry. By Halloween (or, well, maybe by Thanksgiving) you will have every aspect of this routine more or less nailed. And maybe the bus driver will too.
Sarah Aswell is Senior Editor at Scary Mommy, where she leads the trending team as well as Scary Mommy Book Club. She also regularly contributes humor, essays, and original interviews to the site.
