Last Day of Summer

Remember how it felt when school started in the fall?  The late summer sun turning the leaves prematurely golden, the shadows lengthening early in the evening.  The crickets chirping in the cool night air.  A new pencil case, a crisp white shirt.  New school shoes just out of their box and slightly too big.  The whole world seemed to hold its breath in anticipation of that first day of school.

And then the day finally cam and you realized - this sucks.

Today was the last day of summer holiday for the kids.  While their friends and relatives in the States are enjoying their long holiday weekend, celebrating whatever it is that Labor Day is supposed to commemorate, our kids will be sweating in their starchy new clothes, nursing the blisters from their new shoes and misplacing their new pencil cases.  

Michael starts Year 1, and Caroline Year 3.  These are both big steps.  I remember starting first grade.  I was frightened of my first grade teacher, Sister Bernadette.  She yelled a lot and once made Kara Sincavage stand in the trash can.  She had a red-faced tantrum when she tripped over Jeanne Rowlands, who'd leaned over to stuck her head in the bottom of the desk to look for something.  I remember the Phonics book from first grade, and that 'W' was sometimes a vowel back then.  

I also remember third grade.  We had bathrooms in the classroom in elementary school and I locked myself in one.  They had to call the janitor to get the lock undone.  This of course all transpired in a classroom full of my peers, all of whom thought it was about the funniest thing that had ever happened to them.  I don't really remember much else about third grade, but I'm sure something must've happened during the year.  Last I heard, my third grade teacher, Miss Chaya, was still teaching third grade, and looked much the same as she did thirty years ago when I was in school.

I spent twelve years in the same school, from first grade through twelfth.  I still have a few friends from that time.  They have children now, too, and they have new school shoes.  

And so it goes.