3-Alarm Morning
For a couple of months now, 6:15 a.m. at the Henderson household on Green Acre Drive in Fullerton has meant time to sleep in a little bit. Why hassle summer vacation?
But all that ended Tuesday morning, when the Hendersons all rolled out of bed early and, for the first of many mornings to come this school year, shoved school supplies in backpacks, boxed up lunches and wolfed down breakfast.
With a teenager just starting high school, a fifth-grader who thought to name the family’s pet pig Puck (because he’s black, round and low to the ground) and a first-grader a little nervous about starting serious school, weekday mornings promise to be lively and packed at the Henderson house for months to come--as it will be for the thousands of students who started school Tuesday in nine Orange County districts. Most of the rest will return by Monday.
A common denominator lurked among the sundry stresses of the Henderson kids: All three had clocked copious time choosing the all-important outfit for the first day of school.
The challenge for Elisabeth, 14, was to find something in this fall’s fashion lineup that was both acceptable to her mom and cool enough for her first day at Sunny Hills High.
“I tried on half a dozen outfits,” she said. “Everything I suggested my mom didn’t like, especially the spaghetti straps.”
Her bedroom floor was strewn with magazines, and photos of friends plastered her mirrored closet along with Wango Tango and Disneyland ticket stubs.
Hair secured at her right temple with a baby barrette and clad in a dark denim skirt and long-sleeved brown shirt, she was ready for her high school debut.
“For a minute there, I thought my mom was going to measure the length of my skirt,” Elisabeth said.
Soon, the high school hallways will be teeming with new trends, but Elisabeth said she’s not a victim to fickle fads--like piercing. “My cousin got a belly ring and it got infected and it was so gross,” she said rolling her eyes.
Meanwhile, mom Vicki bustled in the kitchen preparing breakfast for her youngest child, Rebecca, who padded around the hallways barefoot in an oversized T-shirt. Middle child, fifth-grader Cameron, was still sleeping.
The Henderson family has a few traditions: They take a first day of school portrait in the front patio and Vicki always stashes a napkin in each child’s lunch box with a personal note. Her husband, Don, is a doctor and was asleep after a long night on call.
Elisabeth, having finished preening, was ready to hitch a ride with her next-door neighbor, a senior.
“Does my makeup look OK?” she asked.
“It’s just right, honey,” her mom said.
Cameron appeared from his bedroom, slow and sleepy, to bid goodbye to his sister.
“Should I take a shower?” he called to his mom.
“Yes!” she said, snapping a pose of Elisabeth by a birch tree in the frontyard.
Vicki then corralled 6-year-old Rebecca into her room to help her pull on a new white T-shirt and taupe overalls and secure her hair in a ponytail.
“Everybody had haircuts last week,” said Vicki, checking out Rebecca’s even bangs.
Fully dressed and backpack ready, Rebecca climbed back into bed after her mom turned her attention to Cameron’s outfit in the adjacent bedroom.
“I don’t want to go to school,” she said. “It’s sad when summer ends. I just want to stay in kindergarten.”
Cameron, 10, was more nonchalant about the guillotine of autumn, and grabbed his pre-selected cargo shorts and collared shirt with gusto, biting off the tags.
As the kids finished picking at their cereal and toast in the kitchen, Vicki surreptitiously tucked the mom-note napkins into their lunch boxes and then sent Rebecca and Cameron off to the bathroom to brush their teeth.
Vicki, a speech therapist at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, is kicking off a chockablock schedule with school pickups and drop-offs, lunches to make and homework to shepherd.
After the short drive, Cameron and Rebecca bounded out of the car with their backpacks bulging with new school supplies and full lunch boxes, and walked with their mom to the classrooms at Laguna Road School.
“Give me a smooch,” Vicki told Cameron before he joined his friends in the five minutes of precious playtime before the bell rang.
Rebecca was more reticent about entering her classroom. “I miss my mom when the teacher reads a story,” she said.
After seeing her friend Alexa from kindergarten, Rebecca seemed to relax. By the time the bell rang and the circle of parents--some wielding video recorders--were kicked out of the classroom, she was happily talking to her three table mates and playing with the purple plastic basket full of glue sticks and crayons.
Vicki sighed and joined the other mothers from the PTA selling school T-shirts outside the principal’s office.
“I really enjoy having my kids at home,” she said. “But you can’t stand in their way. You have to let them go.”
