Word by Freya Bennett // illustrations by Nea Valdivia
I was eight when I finally attended my first ‘normal’ primary school. Before that, I had been part of several iterations of a homeschool group, each one leaving me—an anxious child craving structure—feeling lost and adrift. Mum, though well-meaning, placed her highly anxious child in an unconventional education setting (an eccentric old teacher’s house that always smelt of overcooked greens) surrounded by a group of boisterous boys—likely with undiagnosed ADHD.
A decision to move from our quiet country town to Sydney meant I would soon be attending a large school (though still an alternative one). This prompted Mum to pull me out of the homeschool group and enrol me in one of the local primary schools for a term to prepare me for school in the big city.
I was ecstatic. My best friend attended this school, albeit in a younger grade, and I’d heard you could order doughnuts for lunch! Unfortunately, and as I’ve taken many years to learn about myself, my excitement overwhelmed my system, and my exhilaration quickly turned into a full-blown panic. I spent the first few weeks at my new school shaking, quivering and crying, my body unable to process the monumental change, although it was something I had yearned for.
Despite my body’s response to this change, my brain sparkled. I felt alive with possibilities as I was finally learning properly! I was given readers in a pouch with my name printed on the front! I was handed crisp white worksheets to fill out instead of having to decorate a blank page to make my own! Stickers proclaiming, ‘Good Job!’ and ‘You Did Your Best!’ plastered my workbooks, and the bell rang at the same times every day (we even got to take turns ringing it)! Lunch orders were written on empty brown paper bags (the coins mum had given me jangling joyfully within) and delivered, magically full, to classrooms in washing baskets by puffed (yet chuffed) student volunteers (a sausage roll and a doughnut for me, please!). Finally, my life was starting!
The best part of all was being taken under the wing of two girls in my grade, Cinnamon and Miranda (whom I originally misheard as Mandarin and briefly worried I was meant to have a food-based name, too). They supported me as I arrived crying day after day, offering hugs and snacks to soothe my frazzled nerves. One day, embarrassed to admit I was ‘just worried’ again, I lied and told them that a boy had pushed me. The girls were incensed! They immediately demanded justice for their new, strange friend, insisting I tell them who the boy was. When I hesitated, they began speculating on who it could be and how they would take their revenge, thus began my mad love for the Female Friendship and I realised what I had been missing at my homeschool group full of boys.
While I went on to love my school in Sydney (for the year and a half we were there before deciding city life was much too busy and came home to attend yet another alternative school), I will always have fond memories of attending a regular old primary school full of regular old routines.
Now, with two girls of my own, I look forward with much anticipation to the start of each school year. As my eldest daughter prepares for grade two, I’m soothed by the simplicity and routine of her local primary school. Having attended five primary schools myself—and aside from that brief term at a “normal” school—each felt more like a “choose your own adventure” than a structured curriculum, so it’s almost therapeutic to witness her enjoy such a typical school life.
Two years in and I still get a thrill seeing her in that too-big dress, oversized backpack, and perfectly neat pigtails. Her lunch and snacks, packed with love (and a special note) by her dad, nestled in its cosy compartments. Her friends wait by the gate, beaming when they spot her. Her world is friends, worksheets and routine (and they even have sushi lunch orders on Fridays!).
Now, at home with my youngest daughter, who is just starting to toddle all over the house, pulling rubbish out of bins and books off shelves, I too wish to be cocooned in a day of learning, routine and best friends. And while I don’t have Cinnamon and Miranda to pep me up when I have my inevitable toddler mum meltdowns, I have the joy of watching my school girl with her girlfriends, go about her simple seven-year-old school life.