By Esther Baird
First published in the Tri Town Transcript, September 21, 2018
Back-to-school fills me with so many emotions. Not really. Mostly fills me with angst. I recently came across the first back to school column I ever wrote when my eldest daughter had just turned two in 2006. I sent her to preschool while I was in grad school and I wrote about how amazing it was to send her to school, how fun a nice schedule was, how exciting it was to buy lunch boxes.
I was obviously delusional back then.
Now of course both tween/teenaged daughters go to school half asleep. I see them again after soccer practice looking like they got into a fight with a weed whacker and with the appetite of a hibernating bear. My former 2-year-old now wears heels to school and is reading The Iliad. On top of all that, there are only three more standard back-to-schools left in her entire life after this one. The whole thing is insane.
I was talking to my good friend about the initial back-to-school exhaustion we were feeling and she nodded in agreement.
“Us too, my girls come downstairs and don’t speak they just immediately start playing with their therapy dough.”
“Therapy dough?”
“Yes, it’s this lovely sensory dough for grown ups and teens, it comes in beautiful colors and is scented with calming aromatherapy smells. My girls just like to knead it and roll little balls and form different shapes. It’s very soothing. It’s an outlet when they don’t know what else to say.”
I nodded. And here I’d been keeping a giant air horn on our table to blow at our wayward dog, Moose. I don’t think air horns are quite as soothing, though they do communicate exactly how I feel when I don’t know what else to say.
The next day my same friend handed me a bag. It was, of course, our own set of therapy dough. I was skeptical. But we had an opportunity to try it right away.
The next morning the girls were snapping at each other over breakfast. Or was I snapping at them? Regardless, I could feel our morning slipping away from us in a jumble of last minute forms and half packed lunches and sports bags that had composted over night.
We’d just been living in bathing suits and taking boat rides. Why were we up so early? Why was soccer so muddy? Why did they have to do homework at night instead of roasting s’mores? I wasn’t adjusting well.
I grabbed the jar of therapy dough and ordered. “Play with this and let’s just calm down!” Soothing right?
My girls took the dough and began to mush it around and press it into their hands but they were still sullen and grouchy.
“Are you breathing in deeply enough!? The aromatherapy can only calm you down if you take a deep whiff!” I insisted.
“Now my cereal tastes like lavender!” My youngest exclaimed.
My eldest huffed and rolled her eyes. “It’s ocean mist, not lavender.”
I took the dough out of her hands and rolled it up into a ball. Then I smashed the ball into the counter.
“This is what I think about summer begin over! And if I have to fill out one more form with my insurance number or the same emergency contact that I’ve listed the last FIFTEEN years of my life, I’m going to move to Canada and join a commune!!” I said fiercely.
“Also,” I smashed, “I don’t know,” smash! “What’s for dinner!”
The girls stared at me.
I rolled up another ball and handed it to my youngest. “Now take all the feelings you have about your sister snapping at you and pound them into the dough.”
She took the dough cautiously from me, but then looked over at her sister and clapped her hands together around the ball of dough.
“Stop being annoying!!”
The dough oozed out through her fingers.
Both girls started laughing. From there it was easy, we rolled and smashed and released our tension while eating our breakfast which at that point, tasted like a candle store. And now I think we’re past the hump. We’re back into the routine, though I will never get used to the dead mouse smell of wet soccer cleats.
Next up, the holidays. I know I don’t have the emotional fortitude for that, so I’m busy creating an entire therapy tent, and I will live in it in the back yard. Perhaps till next summer.