My biggest little girl (Little Seymour#1) has now been at secondary school for nine days. And it is with some shame that I realise the truth, and that is that I am not coping!
She’s my baby. She’s only tiny. She’s not ready for this. Stop the clock! She can’t be eleven already.
The school to which we have sent her is quite far away, in a town she doesn’t know. She doesn’t have any friends – only some random acquaintances that we have been desperately forcing on her since Easter, just so that she wouldn’t be totally alone.
There are boys there! Big ones, with inhumanly deep voices.
And some of the girls are rather intimidating, too.
But worst of all, on top of all of the above, is that she has to get the bus. In her over-sized blazer and skirt, with her innocent little face and her shiny new shoes (plus the facial scar she acquired when her dad ran her over with his surf board during the summer), she has to endure the daily ordeal of clambering on to a coach every morning (far too early to be civilised), and run the gauntlet of finding a free seat that isn’t next to the scariest Year Ten child on the planet, or covered in gum. Or puke.
Ok, I’m exaggerating. There hasn’t been any puke. Not yet.
I’ve been on to the school about potential “bus trouble”, as we shall call it. ( I refuse to use the B word yet.) I have written at length to the bus company with regards to the hazardous siting of the bus stop. And I have waited with her at the bus stop each morning and tried to look the right mix of scary/cool, just to try to fend off/avoid any trouble. In my naivety, I hope this might work.
I know. I’m an awful control freak.
I have telephoned the doctor in an attempt to solve the latest problem; sneezing. At a time when all she wants to do is blend in, she’s finding herself propelling out enormous globs of snot in class due to a horrible bout of sporadic hayfevery sneezing fits. The teacher, probably understandably, isn’t enjoying that. And tells her so in front of everyone. That’s not going to help. So we shall be needing a massive vat of concentrated antihistamine, please.
Yet, despite all the challenges she has faced in the last nine days, she’s doing really well. I am very proud of her. Yes, on Day Three, I was ready to throw in the towel, and nearly had Grandma writing a cheque for a few years’ cosseting in the private sector. “I just want her to be happy!” I wailed in desperation, as I thought of her in that big, scary, “comprehensive” place.
My husband has no patience with me when I worry about her – let’s just say our ten year wedding anniversary went by very quietly last week after he chose the wrong way to deal with my anxieties about her on the aforementioned and painful “Day Three”. But that’s another matter…
Yes, I do worry about her. No, I am not ready to let her walk to the bus stop alone in the mornings. And no, I won’t stop being there to collect her from the bus stop in the afternoons. All the while I can, I’ll bloody well do it.
But soon – sooner than I will want, she is going to tell me that she’s O.K. That I don’t need to treat her like a baby any more. That she is old enough to do this by herself.
Her bus acquaintances are turning out to be really sweet friends, and she even put herself forward to be Form Representative on Monday. She didn’t get the job, but maybe one day, she might.
So I have to pull myself together. This is hard for her, but she’s coping with it.
Therefore, so must I! And get on and deal with the backlog of washing that has arrived in my laundry basket after the new term’s gift of a bout of sickness for the other Three Little Seymours.
Funny little things.
Branded by a surf board – just what you want to happen to your face as you’re about to start Big School.
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