Meet the teachers

I was overcome with emotions when I went to the parent teacher meeting (PTM) this year of my 16-year-old second born. This was it. The last PTM I will attend. A sense of loss stayed with me for a while. Like I lost the right, the power to control.

You might disagree, but I enjoyed the PTMs, the only chance I got to see my peer parents. And teachers who managed my children for almost 9 hours everyday, including commute time. It was a peek into my children's universe, which I had only a tiny role in building.

As they grew, every PTM made me feel like I was crossing the line, trespassing into the world of my teenagers, a son and a daughter in that order. It was the pleasure of the forbidden that my parents were deprived of. I don't remember my parents coming to meet my teachers in school or college. That is because they didn't. Ever. And I am glad—more for them, actually—that they were blissfully oblivious to their ward's shenanigans.

Anyway, I got over the feeling of loss and was beginning to enjoy the freedom. No more complaints! No more horror of meeting the chemistry teacher waving the answer script with more red marks than blue in my face or the physics teacher lamenting my son's total lack of interest in his class!

So that is the last of PTMs. My son is already in his first year of college, and my daughter is in her tenth. The end of PTMs also meant that I could breathe a little easier. Freedom from last-minute rush to help complete notes, unfinished projects, and assignments. Fewer things to worry about like what footwear is best to walk over 5000 steps to meet 20 teachers across 4 floors on a 5-acre campus.

The sense of loss was quickly replaced with a sense of freedom.

Then I had a mail, which cordially invited me to meet the teachers of "students in odd semesters" at SJCC.

Why, oh Lord, why? Let my son live his life, make mistakes, learn, and move on. I don't have to know them. After all, we have done that and will continue to do so. He is an adult and has the right to vote and drive. College can't be riskier than that. And whatever makes the college think I wield any influence over him now!

But soon, the desire to widen the circle of my control took the better of me. And I went to his college and met his teacher.

"Your son," she said, "needs to sleep better." What a clever way of telling me he sleeps in her class!