Early morning

The heat finally broke yesterday, so I took my walking partner on an early morning stretch to finish listening to my book and he could sniff new spots to his heart’s content. As we rounded a corner onto the street where the middle school and the library stand, I saw a boy sitting on one of the new benches in front of our recently renovated library. He was curled toward the library’s entrance, the front tire of his bike resting between his knees, his hood up over his head, phone held up for review.

Photo by Andrew Lvov on Unsplash

It was about 7:15 AM. Hardly a person in sight, save the runners and folks hoping to catch the morning train into New York City. The library sits across the street from the middle school and upon closer inspection, I realized that the boy was likely waiting for the school doors to open. The library too was not open, so he sat in a safe place between the two, visible and warm.

Both of my parents worked, though my mother usually left once we were on the bus. I remember a day when I was in third grade, my mother had an early morning meeting which required she leave long before the bus would arrive. Because we were too young to complete our morning routine alone, make our lunches, and lock the house, my mother arranged for us to wait at our elementary school until classes began.

We arrived in darkness, only the fluorescent lighting of the post-WW2 brick school building buzzing in the entranceway. My sister and I sat pressed against the wall outside of the principal’s office. We watched her arrive in her 1940s style suit and coiffure. She wore red lipstick like Lucielle Ball and twisted the front of her hair the same way too. I know now that hers were platform pumps and she often wore them with straps around her tiny ankles. Sitting there on the floor, I saw her delicate-boned figure take a turn before walking into her office.

She’d replaced the previous principal, a man who wore a deep combover and white patent leather shoes that matched his belt. I remember plaid jackets and ties and dark-rimmed glasses.

We sat with our legs curled up under us, our bookbags and lunch boxes spread around us like safety barriers. As the sun slowly rose, we watched the teachers file into the building, stop in the principal’s office, check their mailboxes, and find their way to their classrooms. Seeing them like this was like running into one of them in the grocery store or some other location. It felt like a peek into their private worlds, witnessing the actors before the show without their makeup or stage direction. I flapped my legs open and closed like a butterfly to stave off the monotony of the moment and because I was nervous.

As she walked out of the office to her classroom, my third-grade teacher whispered to me,

Sweet Stephanie, be careful we don’t see your underpants

And I blushed looking up at her. She gently pulled one of my braids to tell me it was alright, just to make me aware, then winked. I have thought of her and that moment often. The night becoming morning, the inky black turning to neon orange and yellow sky, the casual way the teachers addressed one another, and the feeling of cold tile on my bottom and the back of my legs as I sat in a dress on the floor of my school.

The bussers and walkers began to arrive, and my sister and I stood up and went to line up with our respective classes. The rest of the day went as they always did; we put our things in our cubbies or desks, said the Pledge, followed the daily classroom schedule, lined up with the rest of our classmates, raised our hands and tried to learn something.

Though I kept walking, I turned around a few times, checking for nervous fidgeting or tension in the shoulders or body. He looked alright. Maybe he was used to it, maybe his parents had to go to work early every day, maybe just today. Maybe this was his quiet time and he relished it.

Years later, we would become latchkey kids, and navigating the morning and evening routines around our school days would become our new normal. I’d wear my house key around my neck on a string and on the occasion that I forgot it, I’d sit outside the house on a lounge chair outback or scale the shadowbox that gave the patio shade to reach my bedroom window on the second floor. I’d lie back on the slanted roof watching the sky change from afternoon to dusk, hoping one of my parents would get home before it was dark.