‘I dropped them off then went back to the car and cried, like mums the land over always do’
My primary school was the only integrated school in Derry at the time. My parents were keen that my brothers and sisters went there for that very reason.
I remember being terrified walking in through what looked like massive doors on my first day as a primary one pupil. I gripped my mum’s hand like my life depended on it.
The classroom looked massive and unfamiliar and the faces of a host of equally terrified young strangers peered back at me.
My teacher was Ms Torney, a woman of Indian heritage who occasionally dressed in the most stunningly vibrant saris. I thought she was the most beautiful woman, apart from my mum, I’d seen in my short life.
I can still smell the aroma of poster paint, chalk and disinfectant from that first day and the feeling of achievement of going that length of time — four hours, which felt like a lifetime — without my mum.
I was petrified walking in the doors, but school turned out to be wonderful.
I made many great friends and spent break and lunchtime running around what looked like the biggest playground in the world.
I remember the principal organised for an award-winning
team of American yo-yo pros to come into the school to do a demonstration.
Seven-year-old me — and every single other pupil — sat crossed-legged and slack-jawed on the floor of the assembly hall and watched these guys swing their yo-yos around their heads like lassos, make triangles and ‘walk the dog’.
There wasn’t a yo-yo left in a shop in the land as every pupil spent the next month trying to replicate what the pros did.
For a time, everyone’s career aspirations were of the yo-yo pro variety, but then there were black eyes, broken teeth and people almost strangled to death with yoyo string trying to perform the ‘around the world’ trick.
No one seemed to put a lot of emphasis on health and safety in those days. I remember us girls swinging upside down on a horizontal metal railing, inventing our own gymnastics moves while the playground supervisors stood smoking and gossiping.
Gymnastics was never my strong point and I swung around the railing and whacked my face off the concrete.
I split my upper lip badly, bled profusely all over my school shirt and had a wound that resembled a moustache for weeks after.
I remember the school being evacuated because of a bomb alert. I was in primary two, so I was maybe six years old. We were ushered out by worried-looking teachers trying to keep their cool.
I added to the drama by panicking and insisting that I needed to get my baby brother Cathal, who was in nursery.
I remember being nearly sick with worry and crying my eyes out until I saw him being led out along with his class by his teacher into the rain-swept playground.
I also remember a girl being sick on the floor of the classroom and a boy commenting that he thought girl vomit was supposed to be pink before he also threw up.
This action set in motion a catastrophic chain of vomiting, which saw five or six children being sick on the floor.
It’s funny how things stay in your mind — the aroma of Play-Doh still brings back that particular memory.
I’d say I probably learned things during school too.
My love of journalism was sparked in that school. I wrote a story about a volcano in primary three. My teacher made a big deal of it, awarding me a star, putting it on the wall and bringing my dad over to see it when he came in to collect me. She said it was brilliant.
I have been trying unsuccessfully to get the same adulation ever since.
Twenty years later I walked back into the same school with my own three sons and my daughter. The doors seemed tiny, the assembly hall not actually the size of a stadium, and the playground, which I could barely see the far end of in my own days at the school, looked not much bigger than our garden at home.
I felt the terror again, but this time as a parent. Would my child be okay? Would they make friends? Would the teacher know how very special they are?
I remember them all gripping my hand like I gripped my mum’s and I remember letting it go — a monumental moment in any parent’s life.
Letting them go at the classroom door to walk ahead without you, to make life-long friends, have adventures, learn independence and know how the world works outside the blissful family bubble is tough.
I told them, as my mum did 30 years ago at the same classroom door, that it would be okay, that they would make friends and have fun.
The four times I dropped off a nervous primary one pupil, I went back to the car and cried, like mums the land over have done since the beginning of time.
The first day of school is the first step in us letting them grow but also letting their hands go and waving them off as they venture out into the big world. We should cherish every moment.
❝
I remember all my kids gripping my hand like I had gripped my mother’s hand