First Day

Do they look ready?  

Our lives have long run by a seasonal clock, driven by the turning of the school year.  First as chronic students, and then as perpetrators of education, both higher and public, in three states, our lives have always ebbed and flowed semester by semester, graduation by graduation, summer break by summer break.  

In legend and lore, the return to school happens at the end of summer, as nature begins to reach toward fall.  The heat of the summer has passed.  The air is crisp and refreshing.  The leaves are beginning to hint that they might be ready to change color.  I know this because the advertisements for Back to School show shiny-faced young people wearing long pants and sweaters over their cute little t-shirts.  (And has anyone noticed the vests and the bubble dresses and the leggings this year?  It’s like I’m thirteen all over again)

This is not the reality in our world.  We have counted down to the end of summer vacation through the hottest, most stifling time of year for Coastal Texas.  The sea breeze that keeps things bearable the rest of the year often dies for a while in August.  The cooler temperatures during the recent rains, give way to a muggy sauna when the clouds pass.  Even the suggestion of a pair of long pants, let along a jaunty sweater over a scoop-neck T makes me want to melt into a puddle on the spot.  

But it’s time.  

Even without those advertisements and the mountains of school supplies in the aisles, I’d know.

  

I have this (rare) urge to clean the house.  To sweep out the remains of last year’s graduation and prom and football season and second grade.  To turn out the scraps of old lessons and homework.  To gather up the nubs of crayon and let the Sonars turn them into some kind of wax sculpture that will still draw.  Some people have this urge in springtime, I know.  Which, in a place where you’re packed into your house against the cold for several months out of the year, makes sense.  But here, where most of the winter sees us with the doors open wide, running around in our shirt sleeves, the jaunty cardigan slung over the back of the chair just in case, the Springtime just doesn’t feel like a huge shift from what came before.  

Whether it’s coming in August or September, whether I’m in Pennsylvania or South Texas or Southern New Mexico, the start of the school year just seems to be programmed into my blood.  Even before the high school football players start practicing in pads rather than t-shirts, or the marching band starts marching AND playing at the same time, I know it’s coming.  Partner is still in the educational business of course, but I’ve been out of it for the past five years or so.  Just when I thought maybe I’d recover from the pull of the school schedule though, my kids started getting big enough to be school players.  

This year, that’s ‘kids,’ plural.  Both Sonar X8 and Sonar X5 will be attending school.  Their clothes for tomorrow are hanging on the ends of their beds.  They’re tucked in (not sleeping) with butterflies about tomorrow.  

I have butterflies too.  :)

Comments

[Anonymous]

I love your kids. And I adore that picture. Littlest Sonar cracks me up; his sibs look so earnest, and he's got this exquisitely fun grin on.

I hope the boys have a fabulous first day. We start Tuesday, although I don't meet my new charges til Wednesday. Wish I could say I'm bouncy and excited. Mostly I'm tired. But I'll be happy to see some new faces, and also some familiar happy returning ones too.

Here we go...another round!

Hugs,
Astraea

PS I bought new spiffy colors of grading pens. ;)