Deborah Forster

It’s been a few weeks since A started school. He’s six, now coming on seven and tall in that willowy fair way like a young sapling. I remember him at Nippers in his blue and pink rashie, his nose smeared in zinc. It was probably six weeks ago, and he was bravely having a go at anything asked of him despite knowing no one.

In Melbourne he lives next door to his school and his mother Alice, my middle child, says watching him walk away to school is a weighty thing. There’s something wistful and gripping there in the vulnerability of boys when girls seem more together and more approved of. She thinks about the fragility of little boys. He walks from her, and she sees his shorts are a bit too big, his hat’s on skew-whiff and he’s carrying his enormous  boulder of a school bag even in grade one. The responsibilities weigh on his young shoulders and he hasn’t even gone through the door to a world that reminds me of a jungle, a mighty jungle.

And then there are all the secrets the young hold; secrets about not understanding, about not being good enough at anything, about not showing you’re bored or scared, about wanting more of your parents, about loving and (sometimes) hating your siblings, all these things need to be kept in the vault as you make your way into the world that is school.

The smell of the school is exactly as we all remember it: old carpet, a dash of something whiffy, sweaty shoes, rows of  bags bulging with cut lunches and also the feelings of innocence and fear. Kids sense atmospheres.  No wonder humour rips through classrooms like a blast from a hose, it relieves tension and gets kids looking at each other in the eye.

It’s been a month or so and the new teacher is concerned that A doesn’t shut his locker door (nor do any of the others) and he wants to read all the time (no mention that he’s two years above the class reading age). The teacher also seems to forget that A doesn’t know her yet, so trust has not arrived.

Maybe a more nuanced approach would work. The teacher seems unmoved that he’s shy and lost in the schoolyard, without any skills to introduce himself to a whole new class. That seems to be solely a six-year-old’s problem.

So, we go back to family. His Uncle Chris and his Mum recommend taking a cricket bat or footy into the playground and finding other kids playing and just seeing if you can join them. In primary school, Chris took his footy daily and the boys played at every break for years. Didn’t talk much, just kicked the footy and bowled people out with a tennis ball in cricket. Also in primary school, and this is possibly questionable advice, if advice it is at all, when Chris was trying to talk to girls, some wise lad advised him that girls liked kids who limped. This may have been a joke but without further ado, he dared to limp past a group of girls and they were not impressed. So, thinking fast, he seamlessly slipped back into normal walking with a miraculous recovery.

Alice is back at work now after maternity leave but last year she loved hearing the kids next door at school, their voices running like a bubbling creek as they played in the breaks. When she was in her backyard, she could hear if someone called her son and be happy because it meant he was playing with others. He’s the only boy with that name at the school.

Oak trees line the fence between her house and the school, sweeping the sky like big brooms. Last winter when they were bare, she went out onto the deck to do some yoga while baby Ned slept. She was getting on with it when  something made her look over to the school and there were a line of twelve still little faces glued to a window, absolutely riveted. She gave a little wave and rolled up the mat.

I’m writing this on a mild day, the heat has backed off and leaving curling brown leaves and I think of all the schools I went to, and my kids went to, hot boxes in summer and  cold in the bleak mid-winter. These are the places you find friends and  catch all your bugs and lice and impetigo and all of that adds up to a lot of years. School is the place that contains much of our childhood. Still, childhood is a place we can’t stay and yet it seems to last forever within us.  We carry the brave six-year-olds we were and every other age we were, with us forever.

I had a rocky start to school. It’s always rocky after you’re inconsolable at the outset. My grandfather left me there on the first day! What?  My new teacher held my hand  and told me it would be all right while I sat beside her shuddering from the tears. She probably read us a story; nothing breaks the ice like that. I had that same teacher for the first three years of school from Bubs to Grade Two. Now I wonder what it would have been like with another teacher. Well, sometimes you just get lucky.

After World War II people came from  all over Europe looking to make a safe home here. My teacher was from Latvia.  She was tall, with dark hair tied-back, she wore pleated skirts and cream shirts with a jacket. Flat shoes, no make-up, no yelling, just smooth considered teaching, which is a kind of love.  She mothered us and we learned. Is there anything that replaces real understanding of the child?

I will always cherish the memory of her and how she gave her best to a class of fifty poor kids.

All my children started at the same primary school. In Prep the teaching was exceptional, and they had the same teacher, one after the other. This teacher had that fine quality, empathy. I loved walking to school with them and the baby boy and picking them up and will never forget one winter morning when the girls seemed to be shuffling more than usual. I caught up with the pram and I had a look at their shoes. It turned out our new labrador puppy had surgically removed the heels out of their school shoes with her little needle teeth. Probably swallowed the heels too, but the kids didn’t want her to get into trouble for it, so they just didn’t mention it. They had their runners in their bags, so we swapped in the street, and we were only a bit late.