School Clothes

I love autumn. It isn't September yet, I realize, but it is so cool, gray and rainy today (as it was yesterday) that it feels like early autumn in the mid-Atlantic. I think I love this time of year because my subconscious is programmed to think that it's time to start school again, and I always looked forward to the beginning of a school year. (It always took a few weeks before I got bored again.) I remember sweating at many a bus stop because I always wore my new school clothes, which were more suitable for winter, on the first few days of school even though the temperatures would still be in the 80's. Stiff pants from Hills Department store, matchy-matchy blouses and sweaters, and clumsy shoes. I loved having new pencils, and blank notebooks, and the little cartons of chocolate milk at lunch. I noticed with pleasure the shifting slant to the sunlight and the way the air began to smell different -- and I loved apples. On weekends we visited those country apple orchards where you could buy apple butter.

S is excited to begin first grade. She asked for 1st-grade workbooks for her birthday, but she finds them pretty easy, so she makes up her own homework and yesterday asked me to play school with her. I even got to be the teacher! One of the annoying things about being non-custodial parents is that, instead of getting to pick cute school clothes for your gorgeous daughter, you pay someone else (her mom) to pick clothes you don't like as much. Oh, well, I'll have plenty of opportunity to spoil Abby in turn. Besides, there are very few clothes that could do anything to diminish the happy glow of S's face when she contemplates the coming school year. For her, it begins on Monday. I hope it is everything she dreams it will be.

And like S, even now, 13 years since I last began a school year, I love back-to-school time. The rain just reminds me of running for the school bus, or throwing a challis scarf over my head to walk between classes at Penn. Waking up to this changing season compels me to make bowls of oatmeal in the morning and to sit by the window, journaling, like I did for so many years of higher education. The whole thing also makes me want new school clothes, even if this year they will have secret belly panels and be about two sizes too big. I probably will find it difficult to wait til the cold weather comes to put them on.