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“Describing her first day back in grade school after a long absence, a teacher said, It was like trying to hold 35 corks under water at the same time. “

September 7, 2015

Labor Day was the last day of freedom for me. School always started the next day. I knew when it was Labor Day even before I mastered calendars as my mother always sang a happy tune. Nothing flustered her. I suspect the chant of one more day was repeating in her head blocking out anything else including our usual squabbles. She forced us to bathe even though we hadn’t gotten all that dirty since Saturday. We complained but she didn’t really care. By bedtime, an early bedtime, more cause for complaint, her inner voice was chanting tomorrow, tomorrow. Had it existed, the song from Annie could have been her anthem.

We were a bit excited but not anything we’d admit. I looked through my pencil box time and again. It could only be new once. Before I went to bed, my school bag was ready with a pad of paper, that pencil box and some crayons, a small box. My mother would make our lunches in the morning and put them in the lunch boxes. She always took out the thermos bottles if we weren’t going to use them. They were easily broken. I can still remember the tinkling sound of thin glass in a broken thermos bottle. Our new clothes and shoes were out and ready. The shoes we’d wear every day but the clothes were only for the first day. After that, uniforms were the order of the day. We already knew our teachers. It was a nun one year and a regular person the next year except in the sixth ad seventh grades. No nuns taught either of those years, but a nun taught each of the eighth grade classes.

I don’t remember when I stopped using a lunch box and used a brown bag instead. I guess it was a milestone of sorts. Gone too were the pencil cases and the school bags. I used pens and carried my books. School wasn’t just the end of vacation. It was also the return of routine. That was the worse part.

Categories: Music
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“Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years. “

August 22, 2014

Just as I went to get the newspapers it started to rain, not mist but heavy drops of rain. I went anyway. I got wet and I got chilly. The rain has since stopped though it is still a bit dark, but every now and then I can see the sun fighting its way through the clouds. I think it will be a sunny afternoon.

We never had to do much back to school shopping. We wore uniforms so new clothes weren’t necessary. We got new shoes, new socks and new underwear. We had to go to the shoe store and have our feet measured before my mother could buy the shoes. They were always sturdy shoes which had to last as long as possible. I’d show my mother what I wanted, and she’d shake her head and show me what she wanted. We seldom agreed. I always lost. The socks were white or blue to match the uniform. The underwear was always cotton and always the same brand, Lollipop, a strange name for underwear. The underwear was never stylish, but it wouldn’t have embarrassed my mother had I been in an accident.

The best school shopping was for supplies. We’d buy a school bag usually one of those square ones with buckles and a couple of pockets, a notebook and some lined paper. My favorite new supplies were the pencil box and the lunch box. Those took time to choose. It couldn’t be just any lunch box. I wanted a character lunch box, maybe somebody I watched on TV like Annie Oakley or Rin Tin Tin. My mother never objected to whichever one I wanted. The pencil boxes had illustrations on the front usually of kids walking to school or sitting at their desks. The insides of the boxes were mostly identical: pencils, a 6 inch ruler, a small pencil sharpener, colored pencils, maybe an eraser and always a protractor, a complete mystery to me. I had no idea what it was and why it was. I had a ruler so I didn’t need it to draw straight lines. We never used it in school for anything. Once in a while in art I’d make a circle using it, but that was it. It mostly just took up space.

I used to look at my supplies and open and close the pencil box a few times. I’d put the supplies in my school bag, put the bag cross my shoulder and pretend I was going to school. It was a dress rehearsal of sorts. I was never sorry to go back to school.

Categories: Musings
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“Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.”

August 23, 2011

The air is crystal clear and the sun sharp. Today is as lovely as yesterday though maybe a bit cooler. The back of my house, the last place the sun hits each day, is usually my refuge from the heat. This morning it’s chilly. Gracie just came inside for her morning nap. I’m surprised she didn’t sleep on the deck lounge. Earlier, the breeze was blowing the chimes hanging from trees in the backyard. I heard the sweetness of the smallest bells.

Yesterday I went to Staples. The place was crowded with parents holding lists, filling baskets and dragging kids from aisle to aisle. One mother asked her son if he wanted red or blue three ring binders. He told her he didn’t care. The boy had back to school blues and buying school supplies was about the last thing he wanted to be doing.

My mother bought the usual for our return to school. We always got new shoes, usually Buster Brown’s which were sturdy and lasted most of the year. If we had grown out of our uniforms, we got new blue skirts and new white blouses. My brother got new pants and white shirts. We wore ties with our uniforms, blue clip-ons that looked like cowboys might wear them to a hoedown for the girls and bow ties for the boys. We always got new ones because the old ties had been tossed at the end of the previous year. They took a beating because after school every day we’d stuffed them in our school bags for the walk home, and there they’d stay until the next morning. Pencil boxes and school bags were next on the list. I always liked shopping for those. My favorite pencil boxes had everything except duct tape: regular pencils, colored pencils, a small thin 6 inch ruler, a half circle ruler, a pencil sharpener and an eraser. My school bag had both a handle and a strap for over the shoulder. I used to try it on to see how it felt. We’d buy lined white paper with red margins and one Indian tablet. I remember I’d put all my supplies in and out of the school bag until I thought they were just right.

It didn’t matter whether we liked school or not on that first day. It was exciting to put on new clothes and shoes and walk to school. We’d discuss the teacher we were getting because we always knew. We alternated: one year a nun, the next year a real person.

Categories: Musings
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