Lakeside Elementary is on the edge of our neighborhood, right by the Piggly Wiggly. It isn’t anywhere near a lake, thankfully. There is only one natural lake in Texas. Halfway in Texas, really, and honestly, it’s only still there because of a dam.
I park in the church across the street rather than join the line of cars dropping off. I’m not alone in this choice; plenty of parents believe moving constantly on foot is faster than stopping and starting in the car. It’s cold, but Simon and I are both dressed for later in the day. Fall in Texas means figuring out what to wear on days with forty degrees between the highs and lows.
Simon slept in while his older sister Emily and I got ready for the day. As he climbs out of the car, clutching at a half-eaten cereal bar, I notice his long hair still needs combing. His lunch is good, though. Healthy. A thermos of soup, grapes, and cherry tomatoes. He likes to put a tomato in his cheek and pretend it’s his tongue. Then he bites into it, and I act horrified. Or at least he liked this when he was four. I have no clue what he does during lunch at school. It’s his fourth week since starting at public school. He already seems so different, so much more confident. The work is easy compared to the private school where he spent the last two years. He is humble about being the best reader in class.
Simon takes my hand as we start the trek across the parking lot. An added bonus of walking the last bit to school: parking lots and street crossings are still ingrained as a place to hold hands. I remind myself daily how soon it was before his sister Emily started pulling away. Though she was old enough to remember life before her mother drowned at sea.
“You actually have to say the Pledge of Allegiance,” Simon says. “And the Texas pledge.” The topic was from last week — I’m glad it’s been on his mind. We step through the grass briefly to get from the parking lot to the sidewalk, and he lets go of my hand. The dew from the grass soaks through my shoes.
“You don’t have to,” I say. “You can just stand there quietly.”
“I tried just moving my lips, but people kept looking at me.”
We both stop talking as we approach the crosswalk. The crossing guard switches on his hearing aid as he walks towards us from the other side of the street. “Hold on, wait for me,” he says. Simon and I stop a solid pace into the crosswalk. The crossing guard’s skin is almost as gray as his hair in the dim light of dawn. I hate how dark it is in the mornings before Daylight Saving ends. Lights from a passing car reflect off his vest. “Good morning,” he says, holding up his stop sign.
I nod towards him, and Simon looks at the ground as we pass. There is no one else crossing with us. “Have a blessed day,” he says. The words irritate me — I don’t understand what he wants to say. Am I supposed to sneeze?
“You can’t let other people make your decisions,” I say, once we are out of earshot. “If you want to say the words, it’s fine. But what other people think about you — that doesn’t matter.”
Simon nods. “I think the first bell already rang,” he says. My watch shows 7:42, still eight minutes before the second bell. The school was right ahead. I can see the flagpoles. The Texas and U.S. flags flop lazily in the mostly still cold.
Cars and kids converge on the school. Everyone else is wearing jackets. Simon has one in his bag if he wants to put it on. Once we get inside the school, I kneel to hug him.
“Dad, not yet.” He doesn’t want to be late; I can tell by how he’s rushing away.
“I thought you wouldn’t want your friends to see,” I say.
“Their moms all wait until they leave them.” He said moms, and it stings — maybe since I haven’t heard him say the word in a while. The sheer volume of moms he must see here, though, every day. It must affect him.
“I think I’m going to say the pledge,” Simon says. We’re in the first-grade hall, 7:47.
“As long as it’s something you want to do,” I say.
“They’re just words. It makes my teacher happy.”
We make it to class two minutes before the bell. Simon puts his backpack in his cubby. The teacher sits at her desk and lets the kids talk before the bell. Simon lets me give him a hug and kiss before he sits down.
“Bodies of water.” These words identify pictures hanging in the hallway — the first graders made each type of body of water from cut-up pieces of blue paper glued onto white cardstock. I stop to find Simon’s. His has a river going into a lake and a wooden dam with a brown crayon beaver smiling nearby. Beavers made lakes, too; it wasn’t all humans. And I bet there are ponds—plenty of ponds too humble to be lakes.
It’s difficult to wait for the crossing guard without Simon in tow. Picture it — a woman in a black Explorer waving for me to walk before Yellow Vest is even off the curb, turning his hearing aid on for me. The woman waves again, and I walk. “Have a blessed day, young man.”
They’re just words. I’m supposed to say thank you. I’m holding my hand to shield my eyes against the sun rising over the houses around us, trying to find the strength Simon has to say the words I know I’m supposed to say. If you zoom out far enough, the same sun shines on the whole continent, surrounded by oceans — enclosing our bodies on land.
Walker Smart is a writer and performer living in Denton, Texas. He earned his MFA in creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte and is the prose editor for Thimble Lit Mag.
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