In the last week of August or the first of September, my friends and I would go to the schoolyard of Milton H. Allen Elementary, checking to see if they had put up the playground equipment yet--the swings, the seesaw, the sliding board, etc. If they had, we'd hang around there a bit, the air filled with the wonderful aroma of freshly mowed fall grasses. As excited as we had been about school getting out for the summer, we were equally ready for it to begin again. We pledged (though no handshake was involved) that we were going to be better students this year. No, really, we meant it--at least, we honestly thought we did--and maybe we were--it's too long ago to remember now.
I remember walking to school on the first day, wearing my new clothes that were often uncomfortably stiff and too big (because my mother insisted that I would grow into them in no time at all) and they were more appropriate for cooler temperatures. But I wanted to look good for some reason, which is strange because I never cared about that at any other time.
By the end of the first day, of course, they didn't look all that new anymore. A half hour on the playground took care of that, and I kind of wished (or maybe it was my mother who wished) that I was in my old comfortable jeans instead of my new corduroys, and a t-shirt instead of my new long sleeve flannel one.
Then there was the new loose-leaf notebook, with fresh dividers, new pencils and in 4th grade, a pencil box, with a six-inch ruler, a pullout drawer with a map of the US, and some hefty erasers for the really big mistakes.
I suppose it was all somehow related to a sense of a fresh start, but at 8 or 10 or 12, who would think about that? But perhaps it's inherent in human nature to want to have another chance or to start anew or to make the past be the past. I don't really know what that's all about, but probably some expert could analyze it and label it.
But one thing remains, Labor Day is like a curtain slowly closing on the last days of summer; enter stage right, unofficial fall. No doubt at picnics or cookouts or on hikes or wherever else people enter the philosophical realm of heartfelt conversation on this day, they will talk of what they hope for and what they plan to do "this year." Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's a good thing, but follow-up is another.
The activity of the schools and playgrounds of life can rumple and soil the new clothes of good intentions. Yet, this truth also remains: while we cannot change or bury the past--which is good because it has brought us to this day and made us who we are--we can actually accept and nurture the reality of the gift of a fresh start every morning when we wake up. Just a thought as I contemplate what I shall do with this day of September 7, 2015.
