Fuzzy, juicy peaches nestle next to pert, taut grapes and depict the spoils of my back-to-school grocery shopping. Beside the alluring produce sit two steel cylinders packed with ice and water awaiting their placement inside the mesh pockets of the children’s backpacks. It’s 7:39 p.m. on Sunday night, and it is certain that one child is asleep and the other one is at least reading in her bed.

My mind laughs that only yesterday I vowed to be in bed by 9:30 p.m. With most people just now considering dinner and the sunlight still beaming through the kitchen window I consider injecting myself with horse tranquilizer. There is no way I will be ready to sleep in less than two hours.

It is a fact that tomorrow on the first day of school I must flee from my bed no later than 6:15 a.m. so that I have time to throw on a pair of shorts, pee the dog and make the hot brown liquid that will allow me to cheerily greet the children at the rude hour of 6:30 a.m. In thirty minutes the little people must be dressed, fed, strapped into their backpacks and seated atop their bicycles for a 7:00 a.m. departure. With a dog leash in one hand and a shock collar zapper in the other hand, I will balance upon my bicycle and lead my pack away from our den toward the elementary school that sits four miles north.

Despite the hideous 7:40 a.m. start time the school is great. In fact, some jolly soul procures a vat of coffee, sets up a table and dispenses coffee to the parents on Monday mornings. When the PTA sent out a survey asking what parts of school we valued most, the leaders wanted to hear praise for the extra Spanish classes and computer labs, but I honestly rated the free coffee as what makes the school exemplary.

Immediately before bedtime the world fell apart for my sensitive child. In the almost three months of summer vacation the rising third grader chose to ignore the workbook her second grade teacher dispensed last May with the instructions, “You better complete this workbook, or you’ll be behind when third grade starts.”

Just before the discovery of the forgotten workbook, Sensitive Girl had vacated her spot in the big bathtub full of bubbles and left open a prime seat under the voice of The Husband as he sat upon the frilly bathroom chair reading aloud MacBeth to us. As a woman who lived a full day in the Texas heat, I couldn’t resist an opportunity to submerge myself under the scented bubbles and claim a more comfortable spot for the reading. Baby G and l lay under the white foam staring at the toile wallpaper imaging Duncan getting stabbed.

The evening was progressing as the perfect back-to-school night. Earlier we popped a bottle of champagne and an apple cider for the children and toasted the summer while our pot of crawfish boiled. A recent trip to Ikea to buy wooden hangers instead found me lured into purchasing a crawfish party kit that included crawfish cutouts, napkins, party hats and a songbook of crawfish songs. Don’t think that we didn’t sing odes to the crawfish to the tune of Auld Land Sang. We did.

Early evening or late afternoon, found us sucking the heads of crawfish and lolling in a smelly bath while taking in a good story. But. Sensitive Girl bursts into the bathroom in full-mode hysteria at the undone math workbook, and unfortunately The Husband decided to take issue with her ill-timed rage. Moreover, he reacted to her statements as if they were spoken by a sane person instead of an eight-year old who might be anxious about her first day of third grade.

Because I know she’s speaking out of anxiety and there is no need for a man vs. child row, I leap out of the bathtub with suds trailing and begin my border colley routine where I separate all the people and nose them into their proper places. After only thirty minutes of wailing the tantrum-timer stops and Sensitive Child morphs back to delightful child. Just like that. One minute she’s spinning like a Tasmanian devil because she can’t remember how to subtract and the next minute she repacks her pink and green whale folders with the chipperness of a happy little bird.

Wonder what will happen at 6:30 a.m?