Trading Trailers for School Buses

There's a weird shift that happens around the middle of August.

One minute, you're pulling into a fairground with a trailer behind you, trying to remember whether somebody packed the back numbers and wondering if a walking taco counts as a nutritionally complete dinner.

The next minute, you're standing in the school-supply aisle wondering why one child needs seventeen glue sticks.

Summer doesn't really ease us out gently.

It just sort of... ends.

And suddenly we're trading things.

Trailers for school buses.

Stirrups for school desks.

Back numbers for jerseys.

Rodeo grounds for school grounds.

Fair food and concession-stand dinners for school and sack lunches.

Late nights under arena lights for early morning alarm clocks.

And maybe that's why this time of year feels a little strange.

Because when you really think about it, we're asking kids to change their entire rhythm almost overnight.

They Have Been Living a Different Life

Think about the way some of these kids have spent their summer.

They've been outside more than they've been inside.

They've gotten up and fed horses.

They've worked animals.

They've hauled tack.

They've ridden in the middle of the day.

They've spent entire weekends living out of horse trailers and campers.

They've stood around arena gates waiting for their names to be called.

They've wandered around fairgrounds with friends they only get to see when everybody's trailers happen to land in the same zip code.

They've been dirty.

They've been sweaty.

They've had dirt under their fingernails and hay stuck to their clothes.

They've eaten meals whenever somebody remembered that feeding children is apparently another responsibility adults have.

Walking tacos.

Tenderloins.

Corn dogs.

Funnel cakes.

Lemon shake-ups.

Whatever could be shoved into their hands between runs, events and chores.

And then August arrives.

Suddenly that same kid who has spent the last three months moving, working, riding, hauling, building, exploring and doing whatever strange little raccoon activity they came up with behind the barn is handed a backpack and told:

"Okay. Tomorrow you're going to sit in a chair most of the day. Remember your locker combination. Figure out where six different classrooms are. Pay attention. Don't talk while the teacher is talking. Keep track of seventeen passwords. And here's math."

Welcome back, kid. 😂

Here's your turkey sandwich.

See you at 3:00.

That's a pretty big gear change.

And I don't think we always give kids enough credit for how quickly we expect them to make it.

Back-to-School Isn't Just About School

The funny part is that school isn't even the only thing changing.

Fall sports start.

Football.

Volleyball.

Cheer.

Cross country.

Practices.

Meetings.

Homework.

Activities.

Schedules start filling up with different colors again.

And for rodeo families, the horses apparently did not receive a copy of the school calendar.

They still need fed.

They still need ridden.

Stalls still need cleaned.

The next rodeo is still sitting there on the calendar.

The fall and winter circuits are getting ready to start.

So now we begin the annual family game of:

How many things can we fit into the hours between 3:00 and bedtime without completely losing our minds?

A horse gets ridden because we had exactly 37 minutes before practice.

Homework gets done in the truck.

Dinner happens at 8:47.

There's a saddle in the back of something that probably shouldn't have a saddle in it.

Somebody's cleats are missing.

Somebody needs poster board tomorrow.

Somebody else has a rodeo entry due tonight.

And somehow one child can remember the Wi-Fi password, every lyric to a song and exactly what their sister said six weeks ago during an argument...

but cannot remember to clean the stall they walk past four times a day.

So yes.

We will still threaten to sell the horse every other Tuesday.

Some traditions survive the changing seasons.

But Maybe They Need a Minute

Here's the part I've been thinking about more.

We expect kids to switch gears quickly, and then sometimes we get frustrated when there's a little grinding between them.

They're tired.

They're cranky.

They're distracted.

They're wild when they get home.

They're emotional over something that seems incredibly insignificant to us.

And maybe sometimes it isn't really about the thing they're crying about.

Maybe they're just adjusting.

That kid who comes home completely exhausted might have spent seven hours trying really hard to hold it together.

The kid bouncing off the walls at 4:00 might have spent all day being told when to sit, when to stand, when to talk, when to eat and when they can go to the bathroom.

The kid who announces on day two that they hate school and are never going back probably isn't making a thoughtful long-term educational decision.

They might just miss summer.

They might miss their horse.

They might miss waking up and knowing there was an entire day ahead of them.

They might miss their rodeo friends.

Those strange little friendships that happen when kids spend weekend after weekend together.

They might live two hours apart.

Go to completely different schools.

Have completely different lives Monday through Friday.

But put their trailers beside each other on a Friday night and they pick up exactly where they left off.

They've cheered for each other.

Competed against each other.

Sat on trailers together.

Shared snacks.

Borrowed tack.

Helped each other.

Probably gotten yelled at together.

And now they're back in separate classrooms in separate towns.

Thankfully, they're only a FaceTime call away.

And before long, everybody will be standing around another arena again.

Then There Are the Parents Whose Kids Aren't Getting on the Bus

There's another version of back-to-school happening right now too.

And I don't think I fully appreciated this one until I started watching families ahead of me get there.

Some parents aren't putting a little kid on a yellow school bus this year.

They're loading a trailer.

Only this time, there's no horse in it.

It's full of boxes.

Bedding.

Clothes.

Boots.

A mini fridge.

Laundry detergent.

Enough snacks to survive a small apocalypse.

And approximately four hundred things Target has convinced us a college student cannot possibly survive without.

Somebody is sending their freshman off for the first time.

Somebody else is moving a sophomore, junior or senior back into an apartment or dorm.

And I imagine you probably think it will get easier after the first year.

Maybe parts of it do.

But I don't know that watching your kid drive away ever becomes completely ordinary.

Especially when that college kid was once your rodeo kid.

The one you spent years hauling down the highway.

The one whose name you listened for over arena speakers.

The one who sat beside you in the truck wearing dusty jeans and boots.

The one whose back number you pinned on.

The one who came through the gate grinning because they just made the run of their life.

Or came through crying because they didn't.

And you were there for both.

Now you're standing in a dorm room helping make a bed that's nowhere near home.

And back at your house, their junior rodeo buckles are still proudly displayed on the wall of their childhood bedroom.

Maybe there's an old back number tucked somewhere.

Pictures on the dresser.

A trophy gathering dust.

Their room still tells the story of the kid they were.

But their college schedule is hanging on the refrigerator.

That gets me.

Because both things are true at the same time.

They're still that kid.

And they're becoming someone else.

Maybe That's What Growing Up Actually Looks Like

I think we sometimes picture growing up as leaving one stage behind and moving into another.

But maybe that's not really how it works.

Maybe we don't leave all those old versions of ourselves behind.

We carry them.

The kindergartener becomes the junior-high kid.

The junior-high kid becomes the teenager.

The teenager becomes the college student.

The little rodeo kid becomes the adult standing in a classroom, office, shop, hospital, field, barn or wherever life eventually takes them.

But somewhere inside that adult is still the kid who learned how to lose in an arena and come back the next weekend.

Still the kid who learned that animals have to be fed even when you don't feel like getting out of bed.

Still the kid who learned that sometimes you practice all week and still knock the barrel.

Still the kid who figured out that confidence isn't something somebody hands you.

You build it.

One ride.

One run.

One mistake.

One try-again at a time.

Maybe that's why those buckles stay on the childhood bedroom wall.

They're not just decorations.

They're evidence.

Evidence of a version of that kid who helped build the next one.

Every Season Gives Them Something

Summer gives our kids things a classroom never could.

But the classroom gives them things summer can't.

The barn teaches responsibility.

Sports teach teamwork.

Rodeo teaches grit, humility, preparation, disappointment, courage and how to get back on.

School asks their brains to stretch in different ways.

Eventually college, trade school, careers, relationships and adulthood will ask even more of them.

None of those things have to erase what came before.

They're layers.

They're building the same person.

Which makes me wonder if maybe our job as parents isn't to keep them exactly where they are.

As much as sometimes we'd probably like to.

Maybe our job is to help them carry the good stuff forward.

Keep the grit.

Keep the work ethic.

Keep the friendships.

Keep the confidence.

Keep knowing how to lose without becoming a loser.

Keep knowing how to win without becoming unbearable.

Keep the part of you that knows how to work when nobody is clapping.

Keep remembering where you came from.

And then...

Go learn something new.

So Here We Go Again

Here we are.

Another August.

Another school year.

Another schedule stuck to the refrigerator.

For some of us, it's backpacks and sack lunches.

For some, it's jerseys and cleats.

For some, it's a kid standing at the bus stop.

For some, it's watching them drive themselves to high school.

And for some, it's pulling an empty trailer home after leaving your kid at college.

Different seasons.

Same strange ache of watching them grow.

So maybe everybody gets a little grace this week.

The kid who's exhausted.

The teenager who's overwhelmed.

The college freshman who's excited and terrified at the same time.

The teacher learning thirty new names.

And the parent sitting in the driveway for an extra minute after drop-off because somehow another year just started.

We'll find the rhythm.

We always do.

The horses will get ridden.

The homework will get finished.

Probably.

The sports bags will eventually make it into the right vehicles.

The rodeo friends will find their way back to each other.

The trailers will roll again.

And eventually this crazy new schedule will just become... normal.

Until the next season comes along and asks us to change gears again.

For now, some of our kids are trading trailers for school buses.

Some are trading back numbers for jerseys.

Some are trading fair food for sack lunches.

And some are loading that trailer one more time, only this time there isn't a horse standing in it.

Just boxes headed toward a dorm room and a parent trying not to think too hard about how fast eighteen years went.

Back home, the rodeo buckles can stay right where they are.

Because that kid isn't gone.

They're just growing.

And there will be room on the refrigerator for the next schedule.

Here's to another year.