Tomorrow is the first day of school. Children everywhere will be putting on new outfits and sorting new supplies. There are parents who are celebrating this long awaited event and others who are cursing the day. I was always one who cursed – I loved summer vacation with my kids. The first day of school marked the launch of my countdown to Christmas holidays. I lived for weekends and spring break. I was never in a hurry to hustle the kids back to school.
Summer vacation was like two months of Saturdays strung together – no alarm clocks, a relaxed bedtime, adventures to places near and far, and picnics. I loved having my kids all to myself. The first day of school always smacked of reality – I hated it almost as much as the kids hated report card day.
It’s been a long time since I had to get ready for the first day of school – I have a grandmother’s vantage now. All three of our little girls are bubbling with anxious anticipation, they are excited and nervous. I have lived this day almost more times than I’d care to remember. It’s an end and a beginning wrapped into one confusing morning. I’m exhausted just thinking about it, and melancholy too.
I’m weary of thinking about how fast time is passing, I want to put on the brakes. I want a moment to stand still, reflect and anticipate. I want time to slow down and let me take the wheel for a while. I want to steer us leisurely toward whatever is next. But it’s hard to wrestle the wheel from people excited for adventure, from kids enthused about what’s just around the corner. I feel like I’m along for their ride now and we are speeding toward tomorrow. If I can’t keep up I will be left behind.
As the kids start their new school year in the morning I will be taking a wander down memory lane and remembering those first days of yore — the ones of my children’s time and of my own.
Here is an essay titled ‘September’s Song’ — It appeared in the Peace Arch News, September 2, 1995. It seems nostalgia and I go a long way back.
As I stand in line, arms laden with Duo Tangs, Key Tab notebooks, Bic pens and an assortment of Crayola products, I realize that the summer is coming to a close. The first day of school looms as heavy as an April rain cloud.
Behind me the blue light is still flashing in the centre isle as the last of the summer array of colorful shorts and tank tops are marked down to ridiculous prices. I look around at weary mothers, their cheque books in hand, as they try to calculate the damage this year’s school supply list will have on their over taxed budgets. Where did the summer go?
I make a mental tally of my own purchases, trying to picture the list which sits on the kitchen counter at home. The pile of supplies covers grades seven, nine and eleven, mixed together it looks more jumbled than my thoughts. Was it a metric conversion calculator or a scientific one? A geometry set or a protractor? God, I can’t remember if I need erasers or white out. I inch toward the cash register. Another blue light special is announced; three ring binder papers, marked down from 66 cents a package to 33 cents, for 10 minutes only in the centre isle. The dilemma; should I vacate my spot for a fifty percent savings risking another half an hour of listening to the crying baby in line at checkout three? Or just cut my losses and run for it? I decide to stay put. The line gets remarkably shorter as sale crazed shoppers push their way back past my basket toward the flashing blue light. The hum of voices grows dimmer and the monotonous beeping of the laser price checker has a hypnotic rhythm.
My mind wanders back over a quarter of a century and I find myself standing beside my mother at the cash register of the corner dime store, my face flushed with excitement as I watch the sales clerk ring-in our purchases. Three ten-cent note books a pink elephant eraser, a box of 8 colorful wax crayons, two HB pencils and my very own wooden pencil box. The pencil box being the prized purchase, painfully chosen out of pile of fifty.
Mom waited patiently while I checked the slide of each lid and the swing of each compartment until I found the perfect box. I would take it home and carefully carve my name on the wooden bottom.
The first day of school lingers in my memory. The polished linoleum of long musty hallways, the thumping of energetic feet pounding up creaking stairs. The moan of the windows being pushed open for a taste of the warm September breeze. It all seems so vivid, so real and not that long ago.
The cashier begins to empty my basket, sliding each article across the laser checker and placing it haphazardly in a plastic bag. Another forty-three dollars passes through my bank account as I write my cheque. The bag of loot makes its way home and onto the dining room table joining previous purchases and waiting to be divided among my three students.
The children are enthusiastic about the start of another school year, the reuniting of old friends and the making of new ones. They organize and label their new supplies making the all too familiar promises to keep their note books neat and do perfect homework.
I distribute and divide the note books and paper while eyeing the yellow HB pencils, the one school supply that has remained timeless. I roll a pencil between my fingers and imagine the sensation of my teeth pushing through the yellow paint and into the wood, flakes of yellow paint sticking to the end of my tongue and my lips. So much for the promise of a perfect year the now chewed pencil is the ideal tool for doodling in the margins of a brand new notebook.