new things for an old year

It's the first day of school and I'm ready with my never-before-used backpack, an unopened package of yellow no. 2 pencils, an ultra-mod new purple plaid mini-skirt, and butterflies in my stomach.

Oh, don't I wish.

All I've actually got is a new-to-me cotton shirt with purple butterflies all over it and the fervent hope that I don't give some poor student the wrong directions as she attempts to navigate the labyrinthine halls of our great concrete fortress of learning.

Working now at a school, I find that I miss those last days of summer vacation when the sun is rising later and the air is tumbled with smoke and leaves. The bittersweet anticipation of a new start even as the year begins its slow decline into winter. The new pencils. Unsharpened, with their clean woody scent.

But then, the onset of fall always makes me a little melancholy. And that, too, is probably a good reason to buy myself a pack of new pencils.