This is a repost from my old blog, QUIET MINDS, in May 4, 2014. Issues with attendance have blown up recently, according to friends still in the classroom.

My elementary school friend Ann could not play with me when her father was home because he was a merchant seaman and gone for months at a time. On the day he came home, the family stayed together. I don’t recall Ann skipping school to extend this togetherness. I just recall that she wouldn’t come to my house and I couldn’t come play at her house when he first got home.

While my peers learned the alphabet song in First Grade I was sick at home. Was it in Fourth Grade that I had the flu for a week and missed learning how to count in Spanish? I eventually learned my ABCs, but I’m embarrassed to admit that of all the children at Echo Lake Elementary, I might be the only one who finally learned uno dos tres…  in college. 

I remember how hard it was to catch back up when I’d been absent. In retrospect, I realize I was lucky. My mother made me go to school. I was bullied and teased and sometimes lazy and prone to tonsillitis and chest colds and procrastination, but my mother never allowed me to make a habit of being absent. Too many missed days meant I would have no idea what was going on when I got back to school. A day here or there, a week when I was really sick were allowed, but she ignored my fake illnesses. My mother would look at me as I whined about not feeling well. “Do you have a temperature?” Usually I was shoved off to school.