And That's a Wrap
By Sonya Spillmann
@sonyaspillmann
The night before the 6th-grade pool party, it hits me: juiceboxes!
JUICEBOXES!?
Uhhh. Yes. Juice boxes.
It doesn’t matter that I was at Costco earlier. It doesn’t matter that I wrote juiceboxes on my shopping list. It doesn’t matter that Sign Up Genius sent me a reminder. What matters right now is that it’s 9 p.m. and two boxes of CapriSuns are supposed to be on another mother’s front porch.
But I’m in the middle of packing for an early morning flight and I hardly want to postpone my already delayed bedtime by another thirty minutes. So, I sidle up to the bathroom where my husband is brushing his teeth.
“Heyyyyyyy, so, um … ” Just rip the band-aid off, Sonya. “I forgot to get juice boxes for the pool party tomorrow and I’m packing and I really need to finish. Could you … ” I pause.
“You want me to go … ” we stare at each other, “ ... now?” he says.
I almost want to laugh, the absurdity of what we do for our kids in elementary school. “Yes.” He looks at me and blinks.
“And,” I know it’s one hundred percent fair to share this kind of labor, but it still feels like a big ask here at the last minute. “I need you to take them to the organizer lady’s house.”
He still has a toothbrush in his mouth. “Tonight?”
I nod. “I’ll text you the address.”
***
I am being buried alive by the end-of-year emails.
Your student’s library account is overdue. Just Joking: 300 hilarious jokes about everything ($15.75), along with three other books, may or may not be under our couch, on our bookshelf, or—according to my daughter—already back at school.
Don’t forget to order your yearbook! Supplies are limited! Each email seems so urgent, and has been spaced out just far enough that I can’t remember if I actually ordered one or only put it on my To Do Later list. I’m pretty sure my daughter will be receiving three.
Needs prompt attention! Your child has a school nutrition account balance of $0.80.
***
A story problem: If you have four kids, with seven and a half years between the oldest and youngest, what does this equal?
Answer: That I have had at least one, but up to three, children at this elementary school—for the last fifteen years.
***
In our time here, the school’s been renovated, doubling its capacity; there’s been a major PTA led playground upgrade; and I know which teachers like Harry Potter and which ones have Jedi-like control over a class with only a soft-spoken voice. I’m on my third principal and address the front office staff by first name. You retiring this year, Amy? I’ve participated in the Book Fair, the Fun Fair, field days and field trips. I’ve chaperoned the Kennedy Center, the National Zoo, Jamestown, the National Gallery of Art, and pretty much all of the Smithsonians.
Can I even count the parent-teacher conferences? The hours I’ve spent stuffing Take-home Tuesday Folders? The calls from the nurse's office?
How easily a day could screech to a halt when someone vomited, had a fever, or that one time the nurse called to tell me my youngest had been electrocuted. (She’d gotten shocked by the computer cart—which, to be clear, is not the same thing.)
Guest reader.
Library volunteer.
Faithfully attending the school’s annual “Cougar Crawl”—where all we do is walk a mile through the neighborhood in a big loop around the school. To some this could seem like a silly tradition, but it started as a sign of community solidarity after 9/11 in 2001, and has gone on each year since.
I’ve dressed my kids up for Egypt Day and Virginia day, and helped them build candy-covered pagodas each year in fourth grade. I know every inch of that school.
I was never a room mom, but you bet your lunch money I’d bake three dozen chocolate chip cookies or show up to hand out greasy slices of pepperoni pizza and scoop ice cream and run the limbo at class parties. I can’t organize a thing, but I’m your girl if you want to send home laminated clip art for me to cut.
***
If: these are my youngest’s final days of elementary school.
Then: these are my final days of elementary school, too.
***
Six years ago, in the fall of 2019, my last child started kindergarten. She had a unicorn of a teacher, a tall man who was both disciplined and whimsical. One day he’d have a scarf around his head in a turban, the next, he'd be wearing an oversized black faux-fur coat. Everyday, he expected the kids to do their best, pay attention, and in return, they adored him.
But by March, we were all at home. Four kids scattered in different corners of our small house, each on a screen with their classmates. I could never sit more than an arm’s reach away from my youngest, helping her navigate a piece of technology she couldn’t use on her own. Our administration cut school short by weeks, so we finished out the year playing outside in our backyard.
***
It’s Spirit Week!
Monday: PJ day
Tuesday: Tie-dye day
Wednesday: Summer day
Thursday: Decades day
Friday: School colors day
***
One of my kids was in first grade the year a mass shooting occurred in a first-grade classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. I attended a work event for my husband’s job that same week and when someone asked how I was doing, I could barely speak.
How could I say that it hit too close to home? Or explain what a first grader really felt like in your arms? Or tell them why I’d had to pull off the road the previous day to sob into my hands in an empty parking lot next to an office supply store?
***
More math. Four kids x PTA spirit wear x 6 grades. We have so many school T-shirts by now that we could fill the entire lost & found closet with them. My youngest has had a different school shirt on each day of the week—for the last three weeks straight.
“You want to wear something else?” I ask.
“Nope, I’m good.”
Once, I might have cared. Wear something cute! You have other clothes! But not now. Not after all these years.
***
Earth Day Week! Wear a different color every day!
Monday: bright titanium white
Tuesday: the color of the sky after a soft rain
Wednesday: day-lilly orange
Thursday: aubergine (or, if you don’t know what that is, chartreuse)
Friday: the color of what it feels like to cuddle a kitten
***
In the third grade, each student participates in a unit called Cities. The class chooses a city name, a culture, and a currency. And then each child makes 100 items of their choosing to “sell” to the other students from kindergarten to 6th grade.
My oldest made stress balls, which were just latex balloons filled with flour. My second made 100 pearler-bead creations that I could not believe he actually finished. We lowered the standard with number three, who sold smashed rocks. My last child sold paper ninja stars, 70 of which I would like to take credit for.
***
180 days x 4 kids x 6 years = 4320 school lunches
***
Another Spirit Week!
Monday: Crazy hair day
Tuesday: Twin day
Wednesday: Hawaii day
Thursday: Mis-match day
Friday: Wear a feather of a rare bird and a signed jersey by any pro-sports athlete from the 1990s whose middle name begins with S. Also, bring a bucket and an orange sponge.
***
At least 37 water bottles and half my kids’ jackets have been swallowed by the lost & found. Once, the PE teacher texted me a picture of a blue sweatshirt she saw there and wrote, ‘Isn’t this your son’s?’ then dropped it off at my house.
On the 100th day of school in the younger grades, they are supposed to wear a t-shirt decorated with 100 things. For my oldest, we attached 100 ladybugs to a white shirt. I drew vines and leaves for them to crawl on. For #2 we did 100 hashmarks.
For #3 I just wrote a big “100” on the front of a shirt. I don’t even remember what I did for #4.
I’ve met every class pet.
***
Our school does a big 6th-grade graduation. The kids dress up in nice clothes and walk across the high school stage when their name’s called. We take pictures afterwards and go out for ice cream. My youngest already has her dress picked out and wants to wear fancy shoes.
These elementary school years ask a lot of parents. And it doesn’t matter if you have one kid or four, they can feel eternally long. This is a mystery to me—how what once felt constant and never ending, is actively passing into memory.
I may tear up at her graduation. But after all this time and all it’s asked of us—strings concerts, jump rope club, permission slips, popcorn parties, juiceboxes—I’m wondering if I’ll simply throw deuces at the end and say, “Spillmanns, out!”
Sometimes, you can’t anticipate how you’ll feel about a season, until it’s really over.
Sonya Spillmann is a nurse, an essayist, and freelance writer living in the DC area with her husband and four kids. She's incapable of small talk, loves red lipstick, and spends the majority of her afternoons driving children around in her minivan. You can read more through her Substack, Finding Feathers.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.