There's Always Back-to-School Shopping for Somebody's Kid

The rituals of a new school year can tug at a parent, no matter how long ago the last kid left the lair.

It's like muscle memory of a time when our children were younger, and so were we. And we're bombarded with reminders of our previous selves.

Pools close, and lifeguards' whistles are replaced with the tweets of football coaches and band directors herding marching bands. Here in the Midwest, evenings are still balmy, but by 7, most mothers start yelling for children to come inside.

"It's a school night," they shout as children barter. "Time for baths."

Up and down the street, windows open wide to the twilight serenade of crickets and katydids — and to memories of our parental kisses on freshly scrubbed heads pressed into pillows.

The morning sky hangs low and dark when the first school bus wheezes to a stop for kids with fresh book bags slung over their shoulders like arsenal. Their new shoes are shiny and stiff, but soon enough, the push and pull of heels and toes will mold them into mirror images of the feet that claim them.

Some parents are glad to be done with the harried lives of young children. But a lot of us feel restless at this time of year. It's as if we ran out of children before we ran out of ways to love them.

That's how Laura Dennstedt McNaughton was feeling last week. She grew up in Cleveland and raised her four kids in Lakewood, Ohio, until moving seven years ago to Raleigh, N.C. Her youngest son graduated from high school last spring. For the first time in more than 20 years, no one needed her in that back-to-school mom kind of way.

That didn't sit well with McNaughton.

She recently posted this on Facebook: "This time of year I always feel like I should buy notebooks and crayons and protractors ... oh my."

Minutes later, Toni Coral, a schoolteacher near Detroit, responded: "You should donate a backpack to your local school. I'm sure the principal knows a kid who really needs it!"

McNaughton, who is going through a divorce, decided to do just that.

"I didn't want to be mired in my own problems," she said.

She drove to Target and found the list of supplies for her son's former middle school.

"Elementary children are cute and loveable," she told me, laughing. "They're not so cute and loveable in middle school. They need us more."

She bought a black messenger bag and filled it with everything on the list: three-subject notebooks, pocket folders, colored pencils and pens, highlighters, book covers and a jump drive for computers.

Coral told me there isn't a school district in the country that wouldn't welcome such a gift.

Ditto, said John Hairston, who is communications director for Cleveland Metropolitan School District, where virtually all of the 50,000 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

"We'll take this help any time of the year," he said. "Three months from now, supplies will run out. Our students will need more."

If you'd like to help a student but aren't sure who needs you, call a nearby school, or visit DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit Web site that posts teacher requests across the country. I found plenty of Ohio teachers, virtually all of them in high-poverty areas, requesting everything from textbooks to computer equipment.

One special education teacher, Mrs. E., asked for a tumbling mat. She wants to provide a safety net for her students, all of whom are in wheelchairs, when they sit in beanbag chairs "to give their muscles a rest."

Read that and tell me one person can't make a difference.

Early last week, Laura McNaughton walked through the doors of Carroll Middle School in Raleigh to deliver the school bag full of supplies.

"This is my first year without kids going back to school," she told the school secretary, who greeted her with a smile.

When McNaughton left, there was one fewer kid in Raleigh longing for a book bag to call his own.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "... and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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