First Day of School

August 29, 2010: There are several things about being a kid that are so wonderful they are hard to give up when you grow up.

-Believing in Santa.
-Naps.
-Birthday parties. (Past 16 years old, no one should be having big, birthday parties.)
-Running with abandon across grass, barefoot.

But the hardest aspect of youth for me to give up was the First Day of School.
Were you like me? Did you think every fall that this would be the year you really studied hard?

Or would it be the year you made new friends? Or the year you made the team?
The new year of school, every fall, was a chance to start fresh; an opportunity to change. It was always brimming with excitement for me.

New clothes, new school supplies, new teachers, but all combined in the reassuring rituals of the school routine.

Of course, it was all downhill from the first week on as I lapsed into my old habits and comfort zone but, there was always next year!

The first fall after I graduated from college, I thought I was coming down with a mild flu. I finally realized that I was depressed, just a little, by not getting to go back to school. I was in the real world now. I had a job, responsibilities and bills. And it seemed to me that was it for as far as the eye could see. There was no next year. There was no pristine new notebook to start a new school year.

As school stated in our town, yet again, this past week, I suddenly became conscious of the fact that after sixteen years, this year was the first time my daughter was not starting a news school year. Generally, I am not sentimental about such calendar notations. But, I was misty enough to dig around and find a photo.