School days

August 27, 2011

Even though our family doesn’t yet participate in public school, I still love the excitement of a new school year.

I love that the ‘seasonal’ sections of stores are filled with notebooks and school supplies.  I love the collective smell of crayons and glue and plastic pencil boxes.  I love watching children carefully choosing their backpacks. 

The other day, when I was buying my son some art supplies, the clerk asked me at checkout if I was an educator.  I answered, “No, but I wish I was!” 

I don’t have any idea why I said that.  As much as I love teachers, I’ve never aspired to be one.  I guess I just got caught up in the moment.   

Despite my distaste for bombardment marketing around the holidays, I admit that the fall sale ads for jeans and t-shirts and gym shoes make me all warm and fuzzy inside, like drinking hot chocolate on a crisp fall day.

I already know that when I have school-age children, I will have to force restraint when we hit the mall every August with a list of wants and needs for the coming school year.  My reluctant husband will have to tag along to keep the budget in check.

Although my son only has to walk across the hall of his daycare to his preschool class, I still bought him new school shoes.  His current shoes could be replaced any time, but I’ve waited to bring out the new pair until his first day of class. 

I love the sight of kids with shiny, new backpacks and blinding white tennis shoes filling crosswalks and playgrounds.  I love their laughter as they greet old friends they haven’t seen all summer, and their timid smiles as they meet new classmates.

I love the first sighting of a school bus passing my house.  Usually an impatient driver, I don’t mind the added traffic during my morning drive to work as parents hurry their children to their first days of class. 

I even smile at the teenagers who drive at break neck speeds down our hill street as a short cut to the high school. (By mid-September I’ll have stopped smiling about this one.)

My son’s preschool starts a little later than the public school.  On his first day, I’ll get up early and make pancakes and march him off to school in his new shoes and his hair combed a bit too stiffly.

If you’d asked me what my favorite day of the year was when I was a child, I’d have answered my birthday or Christmas. 

In hindsight, if I think about the day of the year that I most eagerly anticipated with that enticing mix of nerves and eager hopefulness, it was the first day of school. 

No other day of the year held more mystery, took more courage, or had more promise than those first moments in an unfamiliar classroom.  There is something so exciting about a fresh start. 

No matter your age, we all like a chance to hit the reset button, to shake off the dust of the last year and begin anew.  Some people do this on New Year’s Day.  I do this every fall, at the ring of the first school bell.

This article first appeared in the Lewistown News-Argus and the Sidney (Mont.) Herald on August 27, 2011.