The back-to-school recovery period

Schools have been back for over a month and it’s taken me that long to recover from the shell shock of back-to-school preparations. Each June I am filled with fresh resolve and good intentions; I promise myself that I will get those books early, sort out the school bag, the uniform, and all the supplies in plenty of time. Then I forget.

 

Inevitably, on the day before school starts, I found myself cramming the child into a school jumper that has mysteriously shrunk three sizes over summer (there’s also a possibility that the child grew), attempting to ignore the muffled shrieks from within, and then reluctantly conceding defeat. The pain of paying for a crested jumper made from a plastic, recycled-tyre type fabric still lingers a month on.

 

Then there’s the books they need, which meant venturing to the local shop that supplies every school in the area. Normally a pleasant place to browse for bestsellers or fancy pencils, come late August the place dissolves into a kind of refugee centre for parents and their frustrated, feverish broods. The air bristles with anxiety as tills ring up higher and higher and five-year-olds collapse into petulant balls, the demands for pencil cases shaped like giant pencils stoically ignored.

 

But now, the routine of school life has reasserted its hold over our lives. There are school runs accompanied by outraged whining from the back car seat and desperate learning of spellings in the front; the horror of being asked how to explain maths homework and the reliance on Google for refresher courses on multiplying fractions; the smell of a lunch box after a sweaty day of school and the feeling of desperation after hearing about a school bake sale the evening before it’s being held.

 

Especially when you’re told that Lidl buns artfully squashed to look like mum-made cakes just won’t do.

 

It’s almost enough to make the nightmare of back-to-school preparations fade. Almost.

 

Next year I am going to be organised. Next year everything will be ready in June. I swear.

 

Daisy Wilson is freelance writer who lives and works in West Cork. Mum to an almost-teenager and a toddler who is striding through the terrible twos with a glint in her eye, life is noisy, fun and covered in fingerprint marks.