My favorite blues were back-to-school blues
On the belonging that comes for some during back to school
The noise of the season dampens in the warmth of summer nights.
10PM on a humid August night feels as much like a beginning as 8AM on a crisp January 1. Probably because of how much I adored the start of a new school year.
I’d lay out my school outfit, running my excited hands over the JCPenney khakis to press out any last-minute wrinkles. I’d crank open my window, check that my alarm clock/radio was set, and drift to sleep in the heat of late August while a choir of crickets serenaded me from the hostas outside. Everything percussed by the staccato rattling of my ceiling fan.
My heart leapt into the next day, full of promise. I was returning to a place I belonged; a place that welcomed my love of fresh notebooks and strategic scheduling. I was a ten-year-old Harry Potter getting that Hogwarts letter for the first time. You’re a wizard, Emily, said the highlighters neatly arranged in my backpack.
It marked the start of cross country season and jazz band. It meant the smell of moist fallen leaves was just around the corner. And pumpkin spice. And paging through magazines late into the early evening at the Borders by Glenbrook Mall. My heart beat boys and friends and red and orange and yellow and all things fall.
It also meant my seasonal sadness was about to drop from the branches; that the vibrancy I had come into during summer would wither in the fading daylight. That all the things I had hoped for would eventually end. It’s why I love what I love as deeply as I do: I begin in hope and move into enduring. Nothing ends, it just changes—and there’s so much beauty in that.
And then it changes again. And again.
🌿🍂❄️🌱
Today’s Prompt: What did you *really* love about high school? Can you make room for that feeling in your life now?
Here’s the girl who loved (and still loves) school. And the color pink. And probably would have loved you, too, reader.