Another summer tapers down.
BLOG: Valley View
SAN FRANCISCO: Back to school time of the year is such a sweet sorrow. A sneaking remorse gnaws at my supermom persona. My well-planned and evenly paced, productive, wholesome and fun-filled summer plans, bit the dust by week two.
All the educational enrichment, social interaction and entertainment my children received, came from a box- the TV, iPad or the computer. The summer of preparedness culminated in a last day-last minute dash for printer’s ink to get the summer assignments ready for school the next day.
I should’ve seen the signs. When back-to-school sales started popping up over all the stores. Putting shopping off till I possibly could seemed like good sense since back to school shopping always sows huge seeds of discord in my home. The elementary school supply list looks like a lineup of the top 10 gadgets of 2013, causing dissent among the older underprivileged generations.
Going through the list which included an iTouch with a mic, I expected a ‘back in my day’ riposte from my husband, but my teenager beat him to it.
These skirmishes are harbingers of future battles. In the coming years, my back to school list will include a car. The teenager’s sigh has grown more audible and evocative through time whenever we pass her friends who drive to school in hand-me-down BMWs and Lexus.
I console her with, ‘You’d set quite a trend, Indian girl driving to school in a beat up Ford pickup’.
As the summer tapers to its end, ominous messages from the superintendent remind me of the gaping hole in the Educational fund. Then, I’m baited with lists of school programs that’ll have to be cut down without my generous dollars. By Orientation Day, fund boosters are poised for the kill, and more effective than an organized crime syndicate. Amongst my children’s schools, the funds I’ve generated through carwashes, crab feeds, silent auctions, buying candles, and selling popcorn could save a tiny African country.
The lack of school transportation in the area provides Bay Area moms their greatest pet peeve and the perfect icebreaker. Flowing upstream along herds of minivans, through tiny residential roads, to place three kids in three different schools before the first bell requires superhuman timing and precision.
Given the scenario, finding a good carpool alliance is all that stands between stress-free mornings and gritting your teeth at every crossing guard. Good luck finding one, though. Tons of aspects like grade levels, after school enrichments, den meetings, tennis classes, tardiness and your parallel parking skills have to be perfectly aligned to form a car pool alliance. One too many unexcused absence, and you find yourself kicked out of the alliance and plunge down the PTA social ladder. What confounds me is for smart people who came up with the Hyperloop, Californians are remarkably complacent about their shoddy school transport system.
The first day of school is a wakeup call from carefree summers to the stark and sorry reality of our times. Dropping my eager beavers off to class, I try to push down the sudden panic at the thought of receiving a call from the school district’s emergency services. While kids and parents around me are on photo sprees, I’m making mental notes on the height of the wired fence, and escape routes out of the school; fervently praying that innocent children all over are spared from the marks of deranged men and bullets.
To contact the author, email to zenobiakhaleel@americanbazaaronline.com