It is so tangible…The filtered light, the shorter days, the breeze in the air that makes an 85 degree August day so much more bearable than an 85 degree July day. It just feels like back-to-school time. At least in Santa Fe, where we start school, for the Public Schools anyway, in mid-August. I speculate about other places that go back to school later – does it still feel like full-on summer? Does all the back-to-school ambiance hold off for a few weeks?
There is something so specific about the feel right before another school year starts. I still get the itch to go shopping for new shoes and Trapper Keepers by pure association with the time of year. My kids get fresh collared shirts per their school uniform and grocery shopping-long lists of school supplies doled out by their teachers. It’s not quite as free and easy, but still the air is abuzz with – “Have you gotten your school supplies?” “Did you hear collared shirts were on sale there?” There is a charge in the air and everyone feels it one way or another. My kids alternate between being excited and nervous for about two weeks before school starts.
“There is a charge in the air and everyone feels it one way or another. My kids alternate between being excited and nervous for about two weeks before school starts.”
Honestly, every first day of school since Cash and Olive have gone to school – I have been a wreck. O.k – yes, the kindergarten years, describing myself as a wreck – definitely an understatement. And, of course, the first years of preschool, torture. But every year since, too! I am just so right there with them in that nervous, anxious, excited, uncomfortable salad of emotions. The thing is, Cash and Olive go to a small school. They are with the same kids every year. They know all the teachers. Everyone knows them. There really is no unknown quantity for them. And yet, we all (them not realizing that I am right there with them) still feel all that stuff on every first day of school. In fact I am feeling it right now as I write this…
What is it? So much. It certainly is feeling for my kids as they wade through those jumble of emotions that I experienced myself so many times in my own life. But, I also think it’s witnessing in a very palpable, significant way, the passage of time. I swear it just seemed like last year, Olive was starting second grade. But now she is going into fourth grade. And I get confused about Cash – isn’t he starting first grade this year? No, second. I want to somehow grab a hold of it all and have some sort of say over it. But, its time. It’s so super slippery. And the start of a new school year flaunts that so distinctly.
“I also think it’s witnessing in a very palpable, significant way, the passage of time.”
My theory is that the back-to-school thing – the charge in the air, the emotions, that feeling – is really about the fact that there are only so many first days of school we have with our children. And with each one, there is one less. I am sure that is why I go away crying, every time. I’m another one down.
Hang on. In nine months, you’ll hear all about how emotional I am on the last day of school.
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