The First Day When School Starts, The Emotions Run High In One Household

The shoes crisis was coming.

But shortly after 7 o’clock this past Monday morning, quiet filled the Weisbeck house in the Spokane Valley.

No radio. No TV. Only soft family voices and the occasional beeping of the microwave oven.

Slanting early sunlight illuminated the open living room/kitchen area. Cereal bowls were already on the table.

The little girls were still in bed clothes and bathrobes.

Dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, Maureen Weisbeck (pronounced Wise-beck) ironed outfits for her daughters.

“Annie, do you want to wear shorts? Want to wear a jumper?”

Those are the uniform options open to kids at St. Mary’s School.

But the red-haired 6-year-old wasn’t ready to decide. Not nearly ready.

This would be her first day in the first grade. Big sister Molly, 8, would be starting the third grade.

Welcome to one household’s version of the American psychodrama known as the first day of school.

Most weekdays Bob Weisbeck, 36, an engineer who works in Post Falls, would have already made the lunches, gotten out the breakfast stuff and headed for Idaho by around 6 a.m. But the first day of school is special. He wanted to be part of it.

“You going to have Cheerios, Molly?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Bob’s dad, Pete, smiled down at blue-eyed Annie. “So, you’re going to go to school.”

Annie didn’t respond. Her head was full. She didn’t have time for small talk with Grandpa.

Done with the ironing, Maureen headed back to the bedrooms. “OK, we’d better get Katy bug up,” she said, referring to the family’s newest member, a baby not quite 5 months old.

Bob stayed and got the specs on Molly’s lunch. (She went back and forth on the crust/no crust question, finally deciding that leaving the crusts on her sandwich would give her more to eat, a plus in her view.)

“Will you eat some carrots?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How many do you want?”

“Three.”

Molly started on her cereal and orange juice as her mom called in to Bob, “Are you ready for Katy?”

Maureen, 34, a teacher at St. Aloysius School, emerged from the back of the house dressed in her work clothes and carrying the baby. “Annie is struggling with her wardrobe,” she reported with a note of foreboding.

“Hi, Katy,” said a happy, relaxed Molly as her dad moved over to a couch to give the baby a bottle.

“What time do we have to leave - about 8?” asked Bob.

“About 8,” answered Maureen.

It was 7:36 and she started brushing Molly’s hair. “I feel my part,” said Molly. “Want me to show you where it is?”

Annie walked in wearing a blue-and-white plaid jumper. Her big sister, now wearing blue shorts and a white top, quietly questioned Annie’s choice of attire. But Annie didn’t hear her, which was just as well. Because she did not look happy. She was speaking in that verge-of-tears way that makes it all but impossible to understand what’s being said.

The emotion came through loud and clear, though.

She looked like someone whose last appeal had been rejected and was now about to start a 12-year sentence. Hard time. No parole.

But she rallied. She settled down and started unenthusiastically working on a bowl of Corn Pops.

“How many kids are going to be in my class this year?” she asked.

“Thirty,” said her mother.

“Will I know ‘em?”

She was assured that she would see some familiar faces from kindergarten.

Then, at 7:45, it happened.

“OK, what’re you going to wear,” asked Maureen. “Tennis shoes or your new school shoes?”

Annie got that deer-in-theheadlights look. Angst shot through her. Then the tears started.

The prospect of making a footwear choice seemed to fill her with despair.

“Want me to call and find out what Hope is wearing?” Maureen asked.

That didn’t help.

Someone brought both pairs into the living room and placed them on a low table. “Let’s line them up and look,” said Maureen.

The sneakers were black and gray and looked like sleek hiking shoes. The brown dress-up shoes were stylish and shiny.

“Is it the shoes or first-day anxiety?” Maureen inquired gently.

Whatever. Annie was now facedown on the couch, crying. The next 10 minutes would see her parents take tag-team turns attempting to console her.

They tried everything. They pointed out that her teacher was widely regarded as a wonderful person. They joked about wearing one shoe from each pair. They patted her. They hugged her.

“It must be the shoes,” someone said, mimicking that TV commercial.

Nothing worked.

Between sobs, Annie asked, “Did Molly cry on her first day of first grade?”

Maureen seemed to recall that she might have, but Molly was quick to correct her. “No, I was just embarrassed because you kept taking pictures of me.”

Her parents flashed smiles. Busted.

But Annie’s black mood wouldn’t go away. “Why does it have to be hard?” she wondered.

Then the clock ran out on compassion.

“Time’s come,” announced Bob. “It’s time to go. Got to decide. Time’s up.”

The brown ones.

Amid a flurry of pre-departure questions, the family inched toward the door to the garage.

“Whose Cheerios are still here?” (Grandpa’s.)

“Are your backpacks packed?” (Yes.)

“Did you find Katy’s pacifier?” (Yes.)

At 8:01, Maureen and the kids loaded into the Aerostar van. Bob got in his car. And the Weisbecks headed for St. Mary’s, just a few miles away.

Molly was completely lah-de-dah relaxed. Totally no big deal. Annie, her eyes red, was still praying for someone to say, “Oh wait, there’s been a mistake - YOU don’t have to go to first grade.”

The two Weisbeck vehicles arrived at the school at about the same time. They unwittingly parked in no-parking spots. (There weren’t signs, but they would get scolded later anyway.)

After getting her mom’s OK, Molly ran ahead into the tile-floor gym where St. Mary’s kids were gathering before the first bell.

Maureen noticed that at least a few children were showing up for the first day not wearing uniforms. “Oh, no,” she said. “There are kids in F-R-E-E dress.”

Lugging her pack and plastic lunchbox, little Annie trudged toward the gym like someone hearing a dirge in her head.

Seconds after she went through the door, a little boy recognized her. “Hi Annie,” he said.

She didn’t seem to hear.

Her dad leaned down and whispered a pep talk.

Then Annie and her mom sat at a table and studied some sort of first-day form.

Not far away, Molly, surrounded by friends, was showing off baby sister Katy, who was nestled in one of those hard plastic carriers. “She’s fat for her age,” said Molly.

One of the girls’ aunts who works at the school hugged Annie. But the first-grader’s expression still said “Why don’t you just go ahead and shoot me now?”

She was toughing it out, though. She looked forlorn but was no longer crying.

Nearby, a little girl with blond hair hugged her mother’s leg with all the strength she had.

On the door to Annie’s classroom, two construction paper cartoon-like characters conducted a hand-printed conversation.

“Gee, I wonder what first grade will be like …”

“Oh, you’ll really like it … it’s lots of fun!”

The room, crowded with parents, camcorders and kids, practically hummed with love and stress.

Nervous smiles were the real uniform Monday morning.

Bob and Maureen helped Annie find the spot with her name on a low table. The little girl noticed right away that it said “Anne” instead of her preferred “Annie,” and she requested that it be fixed.

As promised, she did recognize a few of the other kids from her kindergarten days so long ago. One hey-I-know-you face was the boy sitting next to her.

Annie started to relax. You could see it happen.

“Want me to take a picture of her?” Bob asked, camera at the ready.

Go for it, said Maureen.

That snapshot captured a resigned but no longer panicked look.

A minute later, they glanced into Molly’s third-grade classroom. She shot them a friendly-but-firm “I’m fine, see ya” look.

Then it was time for Bob to go to work and for Maureen to drop Katy at her parents’ house and then hurry to her own first day of school.

She’s been at St. Aloysius four years. But she is teaching language arts for the first time this fall. “Maybe I’ll get up there and I’ll freeze,” she said as she pointed the van toward downtown. “But to tell the truth, I haven’t had time to worry about it.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Staff illustration by Charles Waltmire