Back to school, and how fortunate we are

Sheryl Van der Leun

Sept. 9 was my son’s first day of fifth grade. Although we’ve lived

in Laguna Beach since 1997, he is going to what is essentially a new

school for him, the public school, following seven years of

preschool, elementary and after-school care at a remarkable private

school that was once a monastery.

The switch to public school wasn’t based on academics or even

economics. It was purely a social issue: At his old school, there is

one fifth-grade class with 20 children. At his new school, one of our

town’s two public elementary schools, there are four fifth-grade

classes of about 30 students each. Plus, he’d get to meet other kids

in our neighborhood. We also looked ahead to next year, when he’ll be

in middle school, what we called junior high in my day. With the two

elementary schools feeding into one large middle school, I figured it

would be a dramatic change -- though in no way an insurmountable

challenge -- if he were to stay another year at the private school.

Better to merge into the public school system now than at the

sixth-grade middle school level.

These are the kinds of transitions all parents contemplate as our

children grow and encounter new opportunities, new crossroads. Though

the situations couldn’t be more different, on the other side of the

world, in Beslan, Russia, in the months leading up to the new school

year, parents were no doubt going through similar decision-making

processes or were facing other mundane concerns about their

children’s futures. They couldn’t have possibly imagined the horror

that would unfold those first few days in September.

Back in our little corner of the continent, we went through the

usual preparatory stages. Amply stocked with the standard Southern

California uniform of Hawaiian shirts and shorts, we didn’t have much

clothes shopping to do. I spared my son (and myself) the trek through

the mall to buy new school shoes by shopping online, where I found

quite acceptable athletic shoes without ties (very important and very

rare in his size) that were a great price to boot, so to speak. He

scored a new Billabong backpack at surf camp over the summer, so we

were all set there, too.

My son’s new school sits atop one of the high hills that form a

ridge along our coastal village. A week before school starts, at 4

p.m., the school posts class rosters for each teacher. It’s a big

deal. Lots of excitement and laughter, little fingers sliding down

lists of names taped to the window, looking for their own. Squeals or

groans, depending on which list they found themselves. My son had

been warned about the dreaded Ms. X, so he was elated to cross one

thing off his anxiety list when he found himself assigned to the

no-strikes-against-her Mrs. Y. We found his classroom, went to the

lunch room, saw the auditorium and walked around the blacktop

playground, which overlooks the valley sprawl of Irvine on one side

and has views of the Pacific on the other. “Pretty cool,” he said as

we walked toward the car.

The only thing that troubled my son was the prospect of riding the

school bus. Partly because it meant he would have to trudge up two

steep blocks and then turn and walk another two blocks (yes, four

whole blocks!) to the bus stop, but more importantly, he had a dark

fear that he’d miss the bus in the morning. Or that after school, he

wouldn’t know which bus was his. Or that the bus would pull away just

as he was running to catch it, as if the bus driver’s job was to

leave students behind, rather than to get them back home safely.

Completely rational fears, considering he’d never ridden a bus

before.

“Mom, I’m nervous,” he said the night before, when his fidgeting

body wouldn’t calm down enough to sleep. We stared up at the ceiling

and I sang songs that any other time he would have protested, the

globe in the corner plugged in to light the night, as always.

No doubt, in Beslan, children bemoaned the end of summer and had

similar first-day jitters. But these children, and the townspeople of

Beslan, had no idea that Chechen terrorists would force them into a

bomb-rigged school gym. That they would be stripped to the waist,

that they would be forced to endure cruelties and humiliations, and

that more than 320 -- half of them children -- would be brutally,

callously killed at the end of two-day siege.

In this protected, privileged part of the world -- post Sept. 11,

2001, and even now, post Sept. 1 -- the fear that a terrorist act of

this magnitude could happen in our town is not, thankfully, among my

back-to-school worries. I’m concerned, but not very, that my son will

like his teacher, that he’ll meet new friends. I’m even hopeful that

he will suddenly take up sports instead of Gameboy. But I’m not

afraid that he’ll be shot in the back as he flees from unconscionable

murderers.

How fortunate we are.

Still, I insisted that he put a bottle of water in his backpack

(“Mom, they have drinking fountains.”) and watched from an unseen

distance as he climbed aboard the yellow school bus that first

morning.

Yes, my son survived his first week at school. Didn’t miss the

bus. Met new friends. Likes his teacher. Figured out the lunch line.

Hasn’t been kissed by a girl (yet). He’s signed up for after school

programs: chess and, though he doesn’t know it yet, martial arts.

And this week, with a bravery I can’t fathom, the children in

Beslan returned to their school. To the source of nightmares that

even a mother’s lullaby can’t calm, and fears that won’t be soothed

by a global nightlight.

* SHERYL VAN DER LEUN is a Laguna Beach resident.