My kids’ school backpacks are heavy. I strain when I pick up the backpacks to move them from one place to another in our house. They carry them every day, all day at school. While they have lockers in their music and athletic classes for their instruments and gym clothes, they no longer use lockers like we did back in the day. They don’t carry heavy textbooks anymore either, but they do carry their computers, binders, notebooks, papers, lunchboxes, and water bottles. They don’t have anywhere else to put the materials they aren’t using in the moment. Everything is in the backpack.

When my twenty-year-old daughter Riley started middle school in 2015, she was so excited to have a locker and shopped to decorate it with shelves and mirrors and pictures. This was such a big deal amongst sixth grade girls that it almost felt like a competition to see who could have the most elaborate or cutest locker. I drew the line at locker safe wallpaper or a locker chandelier. Her locker decorating desire waned as she got older, but when Covid hit, lockers were eliminated to limit close contact and the spread of the virus. The students no longer hung out by the lockers or touched the locker doors constantly. But after they returned to school fully, the lockers did not come back into use. I assume it became one less thing for school administrators to monitor for prohibited paraphernalia, and that was fine with them. And that may be the correct call, but the result is that four years later, the kids carry their school lives on their backs. 

We’ve all heard about the baggage we carry from the past into the present. We often speak of that baggage with respect to our current relationships and how the past colors the now. Or how we sabotage ourselves today with the failures from yesterday. Baggage sounds big though – like we have a roller bag, roomy suitcase, or steamer trunk full of old problems that burden us still. But the backpack symbolizes the everyday to me. The daily worries and tasks that seem never ending. The logistics of schedules that are too crowded and busy. The anxieties about whether all our people are okay. The stress of the regular routine and the dizziness that comes when those routines are disrupted. 

I think we’re all carrying heavy backpacks. And we don’t have lockers in which we can place some of our obligations temporarily. Put some things away and take them out when we are ready to deal with them. There are no shelves in cute, decorated spaces so that we can compartmentalize our issues. I’ve known people who say they can compartmentalize, but I’ve never seen anyone do it well in reality.   

The only time my kids can put their backpacks down at school is when they are sitting in class or sitting at lunch. And they take them off when they get home. I wonder if we can take a cue from them. Even if we must carry the heaviness of life during most of the day, can we put it down for a while when we sit to have a conversation with a friend or when we take a break to rest? Can we make our homes into sanctuaries where everyone can throw off their burdens for a while? If we keep in mind that everyone is carrying their heavy backpacks, perhaps we can invite them to sit with us to lessen the strain even if only for a few minutes. And when they put their backpacks down to sit with us, we get to put ours down too.