The First Day

Fall is simply the best time of year. Fall is all the golden, red and yellow mash-up tapestry you only get to see for two not-long-enough-weeks after summer has checked out. Fall has crisper, more urgent air than summer. Fall air takes nothing for granted. It reintroduces itself with each breath as it moves through your nose, your throat, your chest. Fall air is much like spring air, but fall air is fresh in a more carbonated way – a way that sensitizes for a winter that will eventually put an end to everything that fall is. Fall is football and World Series baseball and vacationers coming back from their summer sojourns.

One can’t help but adore the prairie autumn for its memories of sounds and sights and smells of harvest. Crisp, crackling, clean, yellow, breaking stubble under your feet that lifts your pant legs and scratches your calf muscles as you greet the day by walking to a tractor or a swather. Wheat chaff that elevates and swirls as you climb back into the cab of a three-ton after a harvest lunch of lasagna and coffee from thermos bottles hidden in woolen work socks, all delivered in cardboard grocery boxes and served on a picnic blanket in the shade of a combine tire.

My birthday is on the first day of fall – smack dab in the middle of harvest season. As a kid, I celebrated more than a few birthday parties at the John Deere Restaurant “up on three” or “down on 29” or “over at Ralph’s”. I may not have had the company of friends at those parties, but I received a gift for each one of my senses – gifts, as I am realizing now, were to last a lifetime. I love the way the dust from a day of harvesting, the dust from a whole province harvesting at once, hangs in the air until dusk. And then, all at once and for that one round up the field, the wavelengths of light are magically refracted and reflected and absorbed to fashion another never-before-seen sunset. I love the close of a season’s work and the stacking of straw bales in a barn loft thus marking the end of summer – the walk down the 18th fairway, the wave to the loyal fans. Fall was almost always good to all of us.

Fall, more than anything though, is school. For twelve years of my life, I returned to grade school in the fall. For another nine years I returned to university in the fall. Even when I wasn’t going to school, I wished I were, when fall came around. Then, I became a teacher. I was again able to take part in the back to school ritual – and I took advantage of my opportunity to do so. I went “back to school” for another thirty-two years. Yes, “Back to School” is a magical phrase – a phrase on everyone’s lips in a magical time of year. “Back to School” is a mantra, a battle cry and serves as a bond, a common thread we all know and, about which we can all espouse our tales of those wonder years.

Kids and their parents head into town or travel off to the city for clothes and school supplies in preparation for “back to school”. The media and retailers themselves, all but go “back to school”. The whole concept must rival Christmas for them fiscally. For me though, back-to-school is an idea, a feeling that ultimately leads to one thing, a reality that bursts upon my senses with such force and excitement every time it happens – that being the First Day of School.

“The first day of school.”

“The first day of school.”

I love the way that phrase sounds, like the name of some former lover one hasn’t seen for a while. We have all uttered the phrase. It means something to us.

The night before is sleepless or, at best, restless. I wake at 4:00 a.m. conceding defeat to the I-can-hardly-wait monster but, none the worse for wear because my anticipation of the day and what is to come is through-the-roof excitement. I am prepared. I arrive early because . . . because I can, because if I am a teacher – I can.

I wouldn’t want to miss a second of what goes on the first day of school. I wait for the first class-mate or colleague to walk in. I greet. Smiles and laughter. “How was your summer?” The first student comes in with parents. All beaming – “Great day eh? Good to see you back. Have a good year.” The first bus arrives. New clothes, new books with no words on the clean, unwrinkled pages; bouquets of yellow pencils and, pencil cases filled with unused scented felt markers just waiting to be splashed onto that first poster project and thereby releasing their untapped aroma. Multi-colored glitter-glue and clean white erasers and state-of-the-art pens and calculators that unknowingly contain every correct answer – every possibility for a perfect season. The hallway floors shine with the reflection of first-years, making it seem that there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of them. The new kids tentatively huddle by lockers they presume to be theirs – not knowing what to say or do or who to talk to – waiting, and hoping that the next kid through the door will be someone that they hung with in Grade Six. The Grade Eights were that lot last year but they are bolder now, cocky almost and, so thankful that they are not in Grade Seven and new and timid and scared. The sophomore and junior grade students are curious about the whole scene and rush to different parts of the school to talk about the summer and to compare stories and clothes and tan-lines. The Seniors are the epitome of cool with their relaxed ‘here-we-go-last-year-let’s-get-on-with-it’ attitudes. They shuffle through the hallways in blankets and pyjamas because this morning was the first morning they actually wanted to, or could sleep in, since school ended in June. This is the last year in which we will see all of them together, in one place, all at once. We must be appreciative of the fact that they are blessing us with their presence here today!!

The Bell, like an old friend, or maybe like an old nemesis, calls and we answer – student and teacher alike. We migrate en masse, talking and laughing and anticipating. On we go to greener pastures. Like golfers approaching the first tee-box – all is possible - I am going to get it right this time; this will be my round, my year.

We change venues at the next bell and the next. New teachers, new students, new acquaintances, new rooms, new lives. Then the blur, the school year waxes – sports, dissections, stories, yearbooks, Christmas pageants, field trips, exams, long division – and wanes and then graduation. Whew!! - Made it! Summer . . . and then Fall . . . and then . . . again, like a breath after a deep dive . . . again . . . the First Day.

I reckon this is how life works – the untapped secret of the universe. Life is sort of like a continual preparation for the first day of school. If every day were the first day of school then we could feel that same joy and excitement all the time. We could constantly prepare and be totally into it, just like we are on the first day of school. We could always feel that all was possible and that there was hope, immense hope. Well, why not then? Let’s play a game. Let’s pretend that it’s fall even in the middle of winter. And, there’s football going on and there’s a crispness in the air and we are sharp and youthful and tall and light, and at our best and we are preparing to go back to school (or whatever it is we do) and tomorrow, in fact, is the first day of school (or of the rest of our life) and we are going to hit the ground in fifth gear and just go out there and eagle this one. Wouldn’t that be cool if we all did that? Wouldn’t that be the way to live the rest of our lives?

I don’t know, but it seems like fall to me. I’m ready, and I’m going back to school. Let’s all enjoy our ‘first day’.