The store sells backpacks. Nobody sells what your child actually walks in with: the grandmother who prays over him at the door, the auntie who knows her moods, the neighbor who has watched this family for three generations. The circle around a child is not a nice extra; for families like ours it has been the whole architecture, the tested tradition of many hands raising one child. School season is when the circle matters most, so gather it on purpose: decide who else knows the teacher's name, who can do pickup, who sits beside you at the first conference, who adds a line to the one-page introduction in whatever language the line comes in. And if your circle is thin this season, a village can start with one person who agrees to know your child's name. The table does not have to be big. It has to be set.