by Denise Dykstra

This week I attended our school’s school board meeting.  They had some decisions that were being made and I wanted to hear what was going to happen.

Once upon a time, I used to attend school board meetings somewhat regularly.  But I missed one, then two and then all together stopped going, as one tends to do when life is busy.

My husband recently informed me we have had our boys in this school for 15 years now.  How does that even happen?  It seems like only yesterday was the first day of school and now we have two graduates, a senior and a sophomore.

I pulled open the door, as I have done so many times — that sticky, creaky door that has never seemed to work correctly.  I walked into the hallway and I felt so awash in emotion it was hard for me to continue walking.

I have not set foot in this school in well over a year.  In fact, I can tell you exactly the last day I was inside this school….Friday, March 13, 2019.  On that day I was working at the school as a fill in when the governor shut down schools.

I was there printing stacks of school work for students to bring home and work on while the schools were shut down to keep the students on track for testing coming up after spring break.  But you know as well as I do how we never returned to school for the rest of that academic year.

The following school year, parents were not allowed in the building to help keep outside germs away from the students.  Not once that year, did I walk down this hallway, the one I have walked so many times before, in the last 14 of the 15 years my children have attended here.

I shook myself out of the odd feelings I was struggling with to greet so many familiar faces when we entered the board room.  Faces I have not seen in real life, just from facebook feeds, for a year now.  We quieted as the meeting began and I listened to parents voice their concerns and listened to the board voice their opinions.

I sat there thinking of all the things we had gone through in the last year.  The 2020-2021 academic year had been tougher than I would have ever imagined.  We as a family felt tossed to and fro with all the changing decisions, all the times we were sent home to quarantine, all the missed school and sports and gatherings.

Over the summer, away from the ever changing policies and mandates, we had begun to feel like ourselves again.  We had walked away from the stress of the school and I had not realized just how overwhelming it was until sitting in that boardroom.

These teachers and staff have become my dear friends over the years.  These parents in the room were people we do our daily life with during the school year.  This community is one I have loved dearly.  And it feels so….

I don’t even know.

I can’t put into words the emotion I am feeling.  I am bright and cheery with my kids, assuring them this year will be better.  And inwardly I am making long term plans for what if this or that or even this happens.  It’s exhausting.

I read an article that said right now people are not really depressed, they are languishing.  Languishing is failing to make progress or feel successful.  I feel that.

I spent hours adding cross country and football plans to our wall calendar, as well as my google calendar.  Last year I refused to do this because it kept changing so I feel like I have healed some and have a bit more hope this year.

I wanted to reach out to the other parents feeling this.  The other people unsure what this is they feel but oh how they feel it.

You are not alone in this.  Sometimes voicing the emotion you can’t quite put into words is the beginning of the healing.

At the school board meeting a teacher I have adored for years stood to make a comment.  She stood there listing all the good she had seen around the school since the last time the board had met. She does this at every meeting and her quick smile and happy report soothed my heart.

She was right.  Even in all this, there is still joy to be had.  There is still good happening.  Like the individual who is pouring themselves into decorating the school to cheerily greet the new elementary students or the man who took days off of work to cook for the boys at football camp – now that’s joy.

And the next time I open that heavy, creaky school door, I will do so with joy in my heart, content with having the opportunity to walk that hall again.

How are you doing in all this?  I am going to encourage you to do what I am going to do (and feel free to hold me to it!).  I am going to feel the sadness because it’s real, I am going to continue to stand by my beliefs and I am also going to choose to list the things that we can be thankful for right now, in this moment instead of being awash in what was lost.