Happy New Year

 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), for the day my father would say, "Let's go to Woolworth's."  While my mother was responsible for most of the shopping trips I needed in life, school supply shopping was my father's domain.  My father is not an effusive person, but I think he was as excited as I for this annual trip.  We would head out to the Quaker Bridge Mall and head directly to Woolworth's.  I had my list of required supplies in hand, and we would methodically tick off every item on the list and then some.  My dad never said no to a school supply request, (though there was some hemming and hawing over a Trapper Keeper in Fourth Grade...a story for another time...), and would often urge me to load up beyond what was specifically required.  "Grab more of those pens you like...no, no -- more than that.  Take a bunch!" "Don't you want more notebooks than that? Take a few more."  When we returned home, I would organize them neatly in my L.L.Bean backpack.  In my closet sat the box with my new school shoes -- penny loafers or Docksiders -- entirely unmarred and smelling of new leather.  This was my holiday season, and I relished it all.  

In my early adulthood, as I took a foray into the working world that does not operate on an academic calendar, I missed the fresh start feeling, but tried to replicate it in any way possible.  New pens, new shoes, new goals and intentions.  Deep inhalations of the crisp September air.  Smiles as I drove by little ones in driveways, eagerly (or not so eagerly) boarding their yellow buses.  After more than a decade, I found my way back to where I had always thought I would be -- back in school.  While these days I do carry a little sadness as I wave summer farewell, I do still love that first-day feeling.  As the boys at my school start to file back on campus today, I will be setting my 'New Year's resolutions', pencils sharpened (computer charged), ready to begin again.

Happy New Year!

Susan XO