5 O'Clock AM

 I know -- it's mid-September. While most people celebrate their 'new year' in the middle of winter, and others according to religious or cultural calendars, I celebrate the new school year.  Standing in a freezing, intoxicated mass of humanity in Times Square never appealed to me,  but the smell of new 'school shoes', the sheen of a fresh notebook, the gentle crack of a textbook opened for the first time...that, for me, is the sound of celebration and renewal.  I always loved school as a child, and with only one other girl close to my age in my neighborhood, summers were quiet, family affairs.  I would laze and lounge, read and draw, tour the town on my bike in random patterns.  I celebrated my birthday in July, a month when my family would often go on vacation to the Jersey Shore or the coast of Maine, and I greedily drank every drop of mid-summer nourishment.  In August, the anticipation would build, and I would wait (patiently, for the most part), ...