Back to School — Photographs

When we were kids, my cousin used to throw himself down hills and crash into trees on his bicycle during the last few days of summer before school resumed. His thinking, creative as it may have been, was that a broken arm would allow him to miss the first few days of school and happily prolong his summer.

During those final, fleeting days of summer, I spent my time sharpening pencils and organizing my Trapper Keeper. I couldn’t wait for school to start. The anticipation of new teachers, new subjects, and seeing old friends made the hours before that first day back feel endless.

Whether we dreaded it or looked forward to it, the future always became the present, and we returned to school.

Now that I have run out of first days of school, I still feel that first-day-approaching sensation every year when late August rolls around. It seems like an inevitable, visceral reaction to shorter days and cricket song in the evening.

This year, I went back to the schools in Leicester, Massachusetts, attended by three generations of women in my family: my grandmother, my mother and aunts, and me. I brought a camera instead of freshly sharpened pencils. Administrative assistants and custodians graciously opened the doors while teachers were busy preparing for the new school year.

A familiar blend of floor wax, books, and a generic cafeteria aroma ushered me into a hazy, dreamlike state where I belonged yet remained an outsider. As often happens, the passage of time made everything seem smaller and, I hate to admit it, a little vintage. Then the dream snapped into sharp focus when I came upon my high school locker. I walked up, entered the combination, and it opened as if by magic. For a brief second, I could hear my friends’ laughter in the hallways and feel again that my entire future was still ahead of me.

Originally posted on the Cowpath and Rotary (RIP) site.