My Old Wooden School Desk

By Renee Shay, Harvesting Thought

-explore–

When I was a child, my parents had moved us children, seven of us, around a few times until we eventually settled into a small town.  We had lived in the country; we had lived in a small town and then back to the country.  Heck, we even lived in the basement of my parent’s restaurant during one of the transitions.   It was about six times before we settled into another small town and that is where I grew up.  I was even born in a town called Portage even though I never lived there, the ultimate poetic gift of irony.  So, I was no stranger to moving from an incredibly early age and the time I am recalling now was no different.

I remember the janitors packing my old wooden school desk up in second grade so they could send it to my new school.  Do you remember, the sturdy wooden topped desks with steel legs?  How they showed their wear and tear with craved initials in them from students who had used them before you.  The kind of desk you can lift the top up and store your school supplies in?  You remember, those desks.  Well, the new school I was heading to was in the same school district as my current one.  So, they wrapped up my desk, with my stuff inside, and took it away.  I suppose they wanted to deliver it ahead of my last days there so that it would be at my new school when I started on my first day.  I suppose, so I had somewhere to sit.  I remember feeling excitement for something new as I watched my desk leave the old classroom that day. 

–challenge–

On the other side of that experience, about six miles down the road, was my first day in my new school, my new classroom.  I remember the very moment the school aid walked me toward the wooden door. She opened the door and all eyes turned toward us standing in its threshold.  I stood there with her in the entrance and began to size up the room as I walked into it.  My excitement for something new had turned to a feeling of dread in that moment.  My new teacher introduced herself to me and me to the class.  She pointed me to my desk.  As I walked toward it a sense of calm began to fall upon me, not completely, but enough.  I could not have been happier to see my old friend.  It was not one of the other kids that I had recognized as I walked through the class; the old friend, it was my old wooden school desk. 

I do not remember if I ever used a wing compass tip to scratch my name into that old desk or not.  I will not ever know that that is okay.  What I do know is that the adults in my world then had no way of knowing how important that desk was to me.  They, I am sure, only looked at it as a transactional necessity to preserve their budget for the year.  What they did not know is how that desk had craved a memory into me.  Something familiar, something safe, had my stuff in it, a place for me to sit, a place for me to feel like I belonged.  Of course, the attachment to it was born out of that moment and would not have existed had it not been for the trauma of change.  I get that, but one never knows what one can become accustomed to until it is taken away or until it is returned.

–expand–

I cannot imagine what the children of this COVID19 Era have been experiencing when for a year now their worlds have been rocked by moving from an in-person environment to a virtual one, back and forth, depending on a surge.  Many have lost loved ones in their families on top of all that change.  I know how this pandemic has impacted me, as an adult.  But what about a child, during the critical years of forming their place in the world, their sense of security in the world, their friendships in the world, how is this impacting them?  How many children are going to be comforted by seeing an old friend when they too return to the classroom?  How many will not because everything old is now new?

Unfortunately, many children will be returning to new classrooms, with new kids, not just returning to the old.  Some kids will not have their old school desks to go back to like I had all those years ago.  They may now be surrounded by new desks spaced six feet apart.  They may be surrounded by sterile plexiglass.  They will be wearing masks that disguise facial features needed to be studied to know who is safe and who is to be avoided.  Their sizing up the room will be a greater challenge than I ever experienced in my lifetime. 

I do hope the school administrators, the teachers, and the custodians of our children, understand the gravity of what they are going through in this pandemic.  The return to the classroom cannot be about the business of educating children but about the beginning formations of turning our little humans into confident, secure adults.  It is also my hope that each of those children can find some comfort from a friend like I had found in mine, in my old wooden school desk.