5 days ago
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My youngest is in the final weeks of year 12. It’s been more than a chapter of our lives, more like an intricately woven tome, crossing time periods, locations, interests and challenges, and includes the plot twist of COVID.
Melissa Coburn and her daughter.
The past 13 years of school have been a time coloured by Book Week costumes, parent information sessions, parent-teacher interviews, exams, sports days and parent social evenings. Personalities, both children and parents, have moved in and out of our lives along the way. There’ve been story arcs and character developments. Sometimes it’s been chaotic and so busy that I’ve barely dared to look more than a week ahead for fear of being overwhelmed by the continuous flow of upcoming events.
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As a parent, I am just a bit player in my daughter’s school life, but my daughter’s impending departure has made me remember when I was a lead in the ebbing days of my own year 12. The enormity of the ending of school, like the conclusion of any long-running drama, rendered many of my classmates emotional. I did not feel that way; I had three siblings already enjoying university life and was ready to join the world beyond. I remember asking the vice captain of the school if she was sad about school finishing. “Hell, no,” she said, and I agreed.
I was not like Laura Tweedle Rambotham in The Getting of Wisdom, running as fast as I could from the school gates on the last day until she was a mere speck in the distance. Nor did I resemble the naughtiest girl in the school, Elizabeth Allen, substantially reformed by the end of her schooling. I was happy at school, having found my tribe and discovered subjects I loved and a passion for public speaking. Time was simply up, and I was neither happy nor sad at the end, just ready to get moving. The school emptied as exams were completed. The language exams (for me, French and German) were among the last ones held, so there were very few year 12 students around by the time we finally exited the school stage.
At home that night, I remember standing before five piles of notes stored on the lower bunk bed in my room, marvelling that six years of secondary school had come down to those five bundles. I momentarily mourned the fact that no one from the school reception would ever again ring my parents to check on my whereabouts. I was also astonished at the idea that I could now sleep in and didn’t have to show up at school any more. (My 6.20am alarm was silenced for decades, resuming only when my own children were school-aged.) Having processed the end of school calmly and quietly, I headed off on holidays before embracing the vibrant world of university.
Besides sporadic school reunions, school disappeared off my radar until the birth of my children made me realise that I would be going back to do it all over again, this time as a parent. It was so involved the first time, each day a mosaic of interactions and expectations, that the prospect was a little daunting. But of course we acclimatise so that the structure of school becomes embedded in daily life.
As a parent, I am just a bit player in my daughter’s school life.
While my daughter is leaving this year, I will be returning to the same school next year for my school reunion. I like attending the gatherings, to see the girls I once knew now with adult eyes. Sometimes, though, I wonder whether school reunions have a time limit such that, once that time is exceeded, reality shifts, the years fall away, the veneer of maturity vanishes and old cliques re-emerge. Does this happen? I’ve never stayed around long enough to find out or had to pretend I invented Post-it Notes (as Romy and Michele did) to put a shine on my last 20 years, but there’s always a first time.
After that reunion, school will be well and truly out for us as a family, and a new exercise book of blank pages will be opened to fill as we wish.
Melissa Coburn is a writer.
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