Memory Lane: Back to School

The thing I liked best about going back to school was back-to-school shopping.

As we went to Catholic school and wore uniforms, this was much less about clothes than about BTS supplies. New folders, new notebooks, new pens and pencils. That’s the stuff I liked. Although I was not above going out of my way for a unique pair of shoes, cordavan (or oxblood) if I could find them. One year I recall finding brown shoes with a buckle. I loved those shoes. I still am not much of a clothes horse, but give me some time in a shoe department, and I will find something unique. Something that is “me”.

It’s still fun now, shopping with the girls. Again, we don’t do a lot in the clothes department. Between hand me downs and grandmothers, my children do not want for clothing. I do like picking up special outfits every now and again, but we don’t blow the budget on clothes. (Not for me, either. I miss the days of uniforms!) Now it is a little more stressful because it’s our money.

I don’t think the supplies have changed much though. Kate didn’t need much because her preschool is also a daycare center (her daycare center as of tomorrow) and is well-stocked with crayons, scissors, and the like. She needed an art T-shirt and an icing container to hold her supplies. Throughout the year I’m sure she’ll need certain supplies, and she has a snack day or two coming up. We also bought her a new lunch bag.

Flora needed the usual: crayons, folders, a pencil case, a backpack. And something different: headphones for computer class! She and I made a special trip to Target a few weeks back. I let her look and browse (a little) and, yes, choose what she wanted. Then she had a lot of fun labeling everything with her name and packing  up her backpack for her first day.

God bless my girls; they seem to love school and love learning. I remember loving school, too, loving learning new things. I probably wasn’t so good with the social aspect of things, but I didn’t want for friends, and I never felt the lack of not being a “popular” girl. I hope that my girls are a lucky as I was, and love to learn and explore as much as I did.

And if they have life-long friends, too, so much the better. I certainly got lucky there, too.