My Daughter is Going to High School Soon — Oh My Heart!
By: Christina M. Ward
Tags: Short Story, Education, Society, This Happened To Me, Parenting

Is she ready?

When i ask my daughter if she’s ready to start high school, the overwhelming answer is that she’s nervous.

The feeling is mutual.

Nervous that she might fall down — truthfully this is likely. She admits to falling down nearly once a day in middle school. She is the queen of clumsy — bless her!

But with all of the gun violence on the news, she is of course worried about that as well. “Why don’t they check all of our backpacks when we get to school? Anyone could bring in a weapon and they’d never know because they don’t check our bags.” It pains me beyond what my heart can take that my daughter has to think this way.

She is preoccupied with the mirror — styling and restyling her hair between declarations of going to school all casual-like with a messy bun, t-shirt and jeans. Then she’s back in the mirror practicing different make-up techniques.

She declares that she is going to play tennis this year, run track, and do boxing (what!?!) and then hours later laments that she may not want to do any sports this year so she can “focus on her studies.” Oh the drama — and school has not even started yet!

High school is tough!

I remember high school well — and facing it in very insecure skin with the wildest, most untamed hair possible (thank God it was the late 80's/early 90’s and big curly hair was in.), and with second-hand clothes and shoes. High school was rough. I was never in the in-crowd and although I took all advanced courses, I never really fit in with the “smart kids” either, at least economically speaking.

Riding the school bus also didn’t add to my popularity. The school bus where the boys had roving hands and the girls were all fairly mean to me.

When another girl at the bus stop comments that the shirt you are wearing used to be hers — ugh, the shame! We didn’t get our back-to-school clothing off hangers in air-conditioned stores. We got them by digging through black trash bags of hand-me-downs from neighborhood kids. With 5 kids in our house, people often sent their used clothing to us. You grabbed what you wanted hopefully before any sibling did — then tried everything on. Whether or not it “fit” was always determined by my mother’s standards, of course.

What I did have, besides the impoverished status, was a hard-ass personality bent toward hairband and heavy metal music and a mouth that spewed curse words every time I was out of my parents’ earshot. I tried to be the tough girl when really I was the weakest. I must have looked more like a “loose” girl than I intended or else the bottom-of-the-barrel-boys wouldn’t have taken to copping a feel whenever they felt like it.

I have tried to teach my daughter that it is ok to say no to people. Your body is yours.

I am not ready.

I am not ready for my daughter, my sweet and fiercely confident daughter, to face these challenges in her life. If one of those boys try to feel her up she will likely punch them in the face! I predict she won’t ride the school bus for long this year — or this little southern Momma will find herself in a squabble with someone on that bus. They had better respect my daughter! Or I might tap into that tough-assness that got me through school!

The first day of school fast approaches and I worry. Have I taught her to be strong? Have I warned her enough about what to look out for — how to avoid conflict? Have I taught her well about choosing good friends, respecting herself, making good choices? Have I told her enough she is beautiful inside and out — and that her beauty is not dependent on what those kids at school say?

Have I prepared her enough for this? Will she talk to me if she needs help with something? Will she confide in me?

As the weeks tick by I find myself more a worrying mother than I ever have been. I can only hope that all these years of preparation will keep her strong and focused. She wants to be a doctor. And it is my job to help her be anything in this life that she wants to be.

Oh, my heart.

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