School has started here in Illinois, for my grandchildren and thousands of other children. For us grandparents, that means receiving delightful “first day of school” pictures of our beloved grandchildren. We exclaim, “They’ve grown so tall!” and “Look how nice they look in their new clothes” and “They look so proud of themselves…”
The pictures bring back memories of when my children went back to school. Buying school supplies and new clothes. The pictures we took, on those first days of school. And how quickly we as parents realized that when our children went back to school, we also entered our own school routine…Watching for papers every night. Monitoring homework. Attending parent-teacher conferences. Tracking the due dates of science projects. And somehow, no matter how early we started, always there were nights of staying up until midnight, helping to paint the papier-mache volcano.
I remember my first days of elementary school, 60+ years ago. The delight of having brand new pencils, capped with flexible, working erasers. The grinding sound of the pencil sharpener as yellow paint and shreds of sawdust fell off the tip of the pencil. The woody smell the pencils gave off after sharpening. The new paper, all clean and fresh and inviting. The new books, all ready to be delved into.
A classroom filled with exciting new things to see, new stories to read, the chance to learn about things I had no idea existed.
It has been sixty-seven years since I went off to kindergarten, a wide-eyed girl with a round face and bangs and hair cut short around my head. Fifty-four years since I graduated from high school. Fifty years since I graduated from college. Forty-seven years since I got my Masters in American and English Literature, did one more year of PhD work, then stopped out from the PhD track and never went back.
But beyond formal education, school continues for all of us, does it not? Each new phase of life presents to us, like the first day of school, new challenges and new things to learn.
In child-rearing, when the moment we get things figured out, the child grows into a new phase and we’re scrambling again.
In marriage, when no matter how many years we have been married there is always something new to learn, and new adjustments to be made.
In getting older, when loss of energy is easy to accept as it happens to other people, but a lot harder to accept when it happens to me!
It is reassuring to know that the simple rules I learned in elementary school still work as I return, over and over again, to the school of life.
Pay attention.
Focus on just this moment’s lesson.
Learn something new every day.
Be grateful, for new pencils or whatever other gifts come your way.
And when life offers you recess, take it joyfully.