More melancholy musings

This morning I was driving to the grocery store and watched a school bus pass in front of me.  I saw one of the students through the windows; she looked unhappy.  Not suicidal-unhappy, just bummed out to be going to school.  Monday morning, you know.  Or maybe she was suicidal, who knows.  I was just thinking back to when I used to take the school bus, when I used to go to school.  I lived in Oregon and went to school on many a morning just like this one–damp and non-commital.  You look eastward and you see fluffy white clouds against a bright blue sky.  You look westward and there’s a storm happening or about to happen.  You’ll see the sun today, but it’s impossible to tell how much of it or how often. 

Often the weather triggers memories of my childhood.  I don’t know why that would be.  I’ve intentionally suppressed most of my childhood, for no particular reason, but little things bring it back to me against my will.  This morning I was thinking how glad I was not to be on a bus headed for school.  Sometimes when I visit my children’s schools, I put myself in that place again, behind the little desk next to all the other little desks, alphabet marching the perimeter of the ceiling, walls smothered in pertinent information.  Education is very colorful in elementary school.  It looks delightful from the outside, but when I imagine myself inside, remembering those days as a young child at school, I can’t help getting a little bit sick.  I realize you couldn’t pay me to do these years over again. 

Princess Zurg asks me from time to time whether it’s harder to be a kid or an adult.  I tell her adults have more responsibilities, because to her that’s what “hard” means.  I also tell her that adults have more freedoms–because they have more responsibilities.  She doesn’t really process any of this.  She’s convinced that kids have it worse, and frankly, I’m not sure that she’s wrong. 

I didn’t have some horrific childhood.  I recall some very pleasant experiences, even in school, which I really liked for the first few years I went.  I wonder if part of the reason I don’t like to remember those aspects of my childhood is that my children’s experience is and will continue to be so different.  They don’t get to spend their afternoons exploring the vacant lot, randomly meeting kids in the neighborhood streets, riding their bikes to the local store, generally enjoying the lack of adult supervision and consequent interference.  But mostly I think I just don’t like remembering that general sense of helplessness, being at the mercy of adults and their plans for me.  Was this really the way I felt at the time, or is it just my perspective as an adult?  I treasure my adult perspective; maybe this is my problem.  I don’t want to trade experience for innocence because innocence doesn’t last.  That’s why the prospect of reliving childhood fills me with dread.  Fortunately, you only have to do childhood once.  Unless you become a parent, that is.

Next Tuesday Princess Zurg starts at the School for Incorrigible Girls.  Initially I was disheartened to learn that they’d accepted her to their program.  Deep inside I was really hoping that they would tell us PZ wasn’t bad off enough to benefit from their services.  I thought, This is not what I want for my child.  But in the last week it’s become clear to me that this is the correct course of action, and the fact that I don’t want it is basically irrelevant.  I don’t want a lot of things, but to a large extent they are out of my control.  Where I was once at the mercy of adults and their plans for me, I’m now at the mercy of my kids and their plans for themselves.