The Cheese Stands Alone

September 12, 2009

The Cheese Stands Alone

Well, summer is over and the kids are back in school, mine included. That first day of school is always so bittersweet. Per tradition my kids had their obligatory (celebratory) pictures taken with their prizey new backpacks. My son entered 3rd grade and rides the bus and my daughter is in preschool so I'm her bus-driver. I am not sure if it is blessing or a curse, because the bus-stop for our neighborhood is at the corner right beside our home. This will be convenient when it comes time for my daughter to enter elementary school, but for my son - it has been curse.

And so it goes, day after day I'll watch the cars line up and the kids pour out. I'll hear them get yelled at to not run in the street and watch all the mothers stand around with their coffee and chit chat. We have lived in this house with this same bus stop on the corner for 5 years now, and I've never been a part of "this club". I know that my time will come when my daughter enters kindergarten next year, I'll wait. But it isn't my membership that I am upset about - it is my sons.

My son doesn't ride the bus with the other neighborhood children. He has autism and qualifies for "door to door" transportation. My kid rides "the short bus". Having been on the receiving end of bullying by neighborhood children and taunting because he rides on "a short bus". There is no shame in the short bus. I go through this every September as new moms are inaugurated into the bus-stop club (of which I am not a member). I have watched my son look out the window and watch the other children and the buses come and go. And, I have breathed a sigh of relief when the school he attended went on a different time schedule so he could wait in our house and just run out when the bus pulled up front every morning.

But, things are different this year. With the way they shuffle the special ed classrooms among the various buildings - it means a new school this year. The school happens to be "our home school" which is great in that it is close by and he'll be around kids who live in the area. It also means, he is on the same time schedule as the rest of the kids in our neighborhood. So, on that first day when everyone flocked like sheep to my street corner my son was standing in our yard and on our steps waiting for a bus at the same time as the neighborhood kids, headed for the same place.

And he stood there as the kids played tag and the moms chatted and he watched. I had to explain to him that he was taking a different bus, not the same bus as "the big kids" (as he called them). You would think that almost 7 years now into this diagnosis I would be 'over it' but I felt that horrible lump in my throat because my child was on the outside. I fought back tears on and off throughout that first day of school - not because my big boy was going to 3rd grade but because of a school bus. That school bus signifies more than just a means of transportation to and from school - no matter how much I try to convince myself of it.

Day 2 of school was more of the same but it was a little rainy so he waited in my mini-van for the bus to come. Meanwhile the neighborhood kids were getting wet and making a lot of noise.

And, on Day 3 of school: something 'big' happened. My son threw his backpack down in the middle of the front yard and told me he was going to go play with "the big kids" (and named one child that he recognized from down the road). I helped him across the street and watched him run around try to play with them - though all but one child ignored him. I let him run around until their big bus came at which point I took his hand and we crossed back over to our side of the street where we waited for his small one.

I couldn't have wished for a better start to the day. So, maybe the cheese only stands alone - sometimes.

New Jersey Moms Blog post by MaryTara. MT blogs her adventures in parenting two beautiful children on the Jersey Shore, life with autism & without it, the gluten & casein free diet, and vaccination choice issues at The Bon Bon Gazette and raising a child with amblyopia at Adventures in Amblyopia.