FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
I sit up straight, large brown eyes wide open. My seat is ‘ttached to a little low table called a ‘desk’. My ‘desk’ is one, two, three from the front, by the window. I stare around. Mummy always says ‘Don’t stare!’ There’s lots and lots of ‘desks’! Lots and lots of boys and girls! A boy with orange hair stares back at me. He sticks out his tongue! I look down at my new navy blue gymslip. I tug the skirt over my knees. I feel the familiar scab. I mustn’t pick it!
Teacher claps her hands. My eyes lock on her. “Put up your hand if you’ve ever been to the dentist.”
I hear a rustle. I peek round. Hands are up. Many hands. Sinking in my seat, I finger the stuff my skirt’s made of.
I don’t know what a dentist is. We just go to shops, and once we even drove ‘cross London to Auntie’s house in Hatch End. She’s got a budgie in a cage. He says “Pretty Boy!” She’s got a rabbit and a frog in her garden. Not real ones. They’re stone ones, by the bird bath.
Teacher claps her hands again. “Put up your hand if you go to church.”
I hear rustling again, and peek.
Ev’rybody’s hand is up, ‘cept mine! The stuff my skirt’s made of ’s got little lines in it. I run my finger down them. There’s a funny hot feeling on my cheeks. I want to run away. But then ev’ryone would see me.
“Have you never, ever been to church? Not even for a baptism or a wedding?”
I gasp. Auntie Kath’s wedding! Mummy made me my lemon yellow dress for it. I got new white socks and shoes and a tiara for my hair and a posy of flowers. They said I was pretty.
My hand is allowed to go up. I’m all right!
In the afternoon I feel sick. My school dinner spills down my white blouse onto my gymslip. Teacher wipes up the sick, but the nasty smell stays. Nothing stays back where it should. Hiccups jerk, and sobs, then tears run down to join the sick.
Now Mummy’s here to take me home. But she’s worried. She doesn’t know what to say to the teacher. Something inside me says, ‘I mustn’t do this. I mustn’t worry Mummy.’
***
For a child, many things are new, scary and overwhelming.
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a (wo)man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”
As an adult, I would like to kneel down beside this little girl at her desk and reassure her. I want to help her navigate her rough sea. I want to clamber into the boat with her and show her how to sail.
Even now, there are times when I cower beneath waves that threaten to engulf me. A storm blows in and I don’t know how to navigate. It’s a new situation for me. I have never had to deal with this before. I want to be in control. I feel like a frightened five-year- old again.
But, I have some resources available to me that were not there for me when I was child. I know now to begin by taking a deep breath. I can use my reason to separate truth from lies. I realize I am not alone, that Jesus is kneeling beside me, reassuring me. And, I can reach out to another person to help me through; maybe someone who has had the same problem.
One day I will look back on these adult situations with new understanding, just as I now look back on that first day of school, and understand that child’s separation anxiety.
” For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
Meanwhile, I continue to have faith in God who knows all; I believe in the sure hope of a future in God‘s goodness; and I pursue love since God Himself is Love.
by Andrea Kidd
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