Backing Into School
Newsletter 2026-07-24
School. That six-letter word drives fear into the heart of even the stoutest child. It’s always lurking just around the corner and never really goes away. I’m forty-one, and I still occasionally have nightmares about failing a class I forgot I signed up for. When I wake up, I have to reassure myself that it’s not possible to retroactively flunk out of college. Then again, I haven’t kept up with recent law changes. If they revoke my English degree, you might be legally required to burn my books. Always keep a lighter nearby in case of educational retcon. There’s nothing more dangerous than unschooled authors with ideas.
My girls aren’t afraid of school, but they aren’t exactly eager to go back, either. With each passing day, they realize they have less time left to do nothing. Starting in the second week of August, classes will resume, and they’ll be expected to do something all the time. It will be a big change for all of us. With half the children in high school, we’ll officially be in our big kid era. For the first time ever, I’m not eager for them to go back to school. Maybe I’m getting more attached to them, or perhaps they’re just less disruptive to my life now that I don’t work from home. They might sleep until mid-afternoon and get dressed five minutes before I get back. As long as they save an extra minute or two to do whatever chore they were supposed to accomplish for the day, I don’t have a problem with it. The less I know, the better. To my great surprise, my life might be more difficult with them at school than at home. They’re finally more of a help than a hindrance. We’ve reached a dangerous tipping point. Before long, I’ll depend on them more than they depend on me. In the not too distant future, they’ll put me in a nursing home. I won’t go quietly. They better pay up for a maximum security one. No community arts and crafts room/cafeteria can hold me.
My earlier description of the kids’ summer wasn’t entirely accurate. They couldn’t all sleep in and be lazy simultaneously. A few times, I inconvenienced the whole group by dragging them on family trips. They could sleep in once we arrived at the beach cottage or my friend’s riverfront property, but they had to wake up at a reasonable hour for the drive there. I’m a cruel task master. They also had activities scattered throughout the summer that forced them out of bed. Betsy had cross country practice, volunteering, and college prep sessions—although the latter were never scheduled before 11 a.m.. That company has evidently dealt with teenagers before. Mae had weeks of marching band and three separate campouts. She practically returned to a state of nature. I’m glad she didn’t quite forget how toilets work. Lucy and Waffle had a campout each, which wasn’t enough time to forget the basics of indoor living. They were otherwise unencumbered by organized activities. The state of their room does so reflect. A chore list is no match for the chaos caused by two kids who are home all day.
I stand by my original point that the house is, overall, cleaner than usual. Most of the mess is confined to the kids’ rooms, all of which have doors that I can close to ignore the problem. Lola tasks them with cleaning their evil lairs at least once a week. For brief flashes, their spaces will look orderly. Then Waffle will forget how hampers work, and the process will start over again. As long as it actually starts over, the room stays at a disaster level that can be quarantined behind a door. There’s no risk that the rest of the house will be infected. It’s a similar process in Betsy’s room, except that she initiates the constant cleanings herself. Her main hobby is reorganizing her room, and the main outcome is that it just gets messier. If she didn’t tell me she was organizing it, I would have guessed she was exploding small bombs to study the debris patterns. If her room actually gets clean (or maybe just less messy since she never completely finishes), she starts over with a fresh mess, emptying out every container and drawer she owns in the name of establishing a new, better order. That contrasts with Mae, her lifelong roommate, who never tries to tame her mess. It grows until Lola gets fed up, at which point Mae pushes it back into a more compact mess. It’s the same clutter, but more vertical. It’s why the girls love their loft beds. They have to get high above the rubble to find breathable air. That’s better than the alternative. They could live in the debris and use snorkels.
I’ve focused on the messes, but those are on the second floor, where I seldom go, behind doors I know better than to open, in a house I’m not even in for most of the day. Since the girls only go downstairs to eat, the first floor stays largely spotless. They even clean it periodically under the command of the chore texts Lola sends after she gets to work. Normally, it stresses me out when the kids do chores. They procrastinate, fight, and, in general, proceed in the least efficient way possible at the last possible moment. When both Lola and I are out of the house, that doesn’t matter. We come back, and the chore is done. Lola is careful to not ask each kid for more than one thing each day, even if the thing shouldn’t take that long. The kids need a full eight hours to put off that thing and then do it in a panicked frenzy right at the end. The only difference is that Lola and I aren’t here to be stressed out or frustrated by their lack of progress. Kids are a delight to have at home when we’re not at home. At the end of the day, we can come together in our somewhat clean house to eat leftovers in front of the TV, just like nature intended. This is the closest we’ll ever come to living like the subjects of a Norman Rockwell painting. We can’t pull it off for a full day, but we can live in perfect harmony for a few hours each night, assuming everyone goes back to their separate rooms when we’re done eating. If they linger at the table, I threaten to make them help me clean the kitchen. That makes them disappear faster than a ninja smoke bomb.
There are other perks to having the kids home all day over the summer. They’re basically house-sitting for me. They keep an eye on the animals, water the plants, and take in any packages that arrive on the porch. Occasionally, they even do dishes, but only if it’s in the chore text. The house is guarded at all times, although I’m not sure what defense the kids would offer beyond annoying an intruder into leaving. They can tell me if there’s a water leak inside or if another patch of plaster fell down. That gives me a heads up to get on my father-in-law’s repair schedule. I try to contact him early to give him time to brace himself. I’m reliably his biggest disaster.
That was all true when the kids were confined to the home, which seems like ancient history now. Since then, the kids have become even more self-sufficient. Betsy can drive. It’s been three-weeks of pure bliss, at least for me. Even when I’m not home, the family can function normally. Mae has to get picked up from marching band practice. The school is only a five-minute drive away, but a twenty-minute walk. In this heat, that’s more like a six-hour death march. With Betsy driving, it’s not a big deal. She took herself to a doctor’s appointment last week. She also ran to the store to pick up seeds for an extra credit project for the start of the school year. She drove to a sleepover. A few days ago, she even did the unthinkable: She drove to another suburb for her college prep class at peak traffic hours, navigating multiple roundabouts. I forgot that she was going until she texted me in the middle of the day to tell me that she had made it safely. That’s when my anxiety spiked. She still had to make it out. Some of these suburban roundabouts make me nervous, mostly because they’re not circles. There are some that are shaped more like peanuts, while others have multiple lanes. The traffic laws there are basically, “Good luck.” I had to trust that Betsy would follow my wisest driving advice: When in doubt, slow down and try not to hit anything. My words must have worked. Hours later, she texted me to say she had made it home. It was then that I realized I had been holding my breath for the last three hours. My brain didn’t need as much oxygen as I thought. With Betsy driving, we’re in our easiest parenting stage yet. The kids require less work but more worry from afar. I suspect that’s the direction things will trend for the rest of my life. Someday, parenting will be zero work and all worry. Time to find a new hobby to distract me.
