It's Back To School And The Air Is Cool!

Holy Moly it's been a hot and sticky summer. You know how the old ditty goes, it was taught to me when I worked at the CIBC a million years ago in 1976.....

"When the weather's hot and sticky

That's no time for dunking _____"

Well, you get the idea. You wouldn't think Susan and Ann would come out with that stuff, but they did!

This last day or two, the air has cleared and dried, it's so much more comfortable. And thank god, because my A/C and bedroom fans are getting an awful going over.

It used to be said that as soon as Old Home Week was over, so was summer. But these last few years, that's just not happening. Global warming and climate change are here. Not coming. Not predicted. They're here.

But I am still loving this cool air today. Wonderful for walking, and getting in the mood for wholesome soups and hearty breads. Giving us hope that it might soon be the end of fruit flies and earwigs.

We sense a definite shift when school starts, and even more so when the weather begins to change.

And there's another thing at this time of year that I have a guilty little pleasure for....

Back to school supplies! Was there ever a more fun thing? I know, I know, today's parents will roll their eyes, but I can't help it. I love everything about them. Jamie and I raised 4 kids, so I know all about it and the added burden and expense. But hey......no surprise when you have kids to send to school. And it's a lot more complicated today I think, than the dark ages when I was a kid, and my poor grandmother had to scrape together some stuff for us to return to school with.

Scribblers, pencils, a ruler, a lunch bag, a book bag, maybe a basic calculator, pretty simple stuff. I shudder to think what today's students are returning with. Including attitude.....

But for me, I feel a funny stir every time I see a stack of Crayola crayons. Back in my day it was Peacock crayons, remember those? Well, they're the stuff of rare collections and e-Bay auctions, existing now only in my memory.

A new box of Crayola crayons, even a box of 8. I don't know what it is. But the smell alone can just transport me to a chair at the end of a big kitchen table, and I can see my 8-year-old self, swinging my little legs as my grandmother busied herself around the old Kemac stove, keeping the kettle on, and stirring a pot of beef and barley soup, still one of my standards. Then she'd sit and rock for a while, smoking on a pack of Camels.

And a new coloring book to go with those precious sticks of colorful wax? Well, that was enough to send me right over the edge. There wouldn't be a peep out of me. I was in kid heaven.

Pretty simple pleasures. A rainbow of pleasures. For hours I would be oblivious to my surroundings, choosing the right color for a flower, a cat, the sky. Even the comforting sound of a crayon laying down color on paper, when you're a kid, it's more powerful than you know. The rare time I might get a box of 64 and then the choices were endless! I wonder if that fostered a love of color, and I ended up later in my life as an avid sewer and quilter?

Even now, every Christmas for decades, I put out coloring books and boxes of crayons on the coffee table. You'd be surprised at the ones who crowd around and grab a book and flip to a page that appeals to them, and empty out a box of crayons. My kids yes, even as adults, because it seems that it's okay for everyone to be a kid if there's a Christmas tree in the window. My sons-in-law, my sons, all of them, socializing around the table, heads down, completely content in their male bonding. I never get tired of it.

And I've kept a few coloring books that have pages completed by my grandkids, it's fun just to scroll through and look.

Our students are back to school today. I can only imagine the excitement. The nerves. The tears. And that's just the teachers!!

All the new outfits that were tried on, rejected, and tossed on the bed. A full lunch bag? Probably not on the first day, but who knows?

School buses lined up.

Classrooms sparkling clean.

Kids crying. Moms crying. Teachers sighing.

It's the start of a new school year, with all things possible.

And for me, it's the simplest of pleasures. The intoxicating smell of a box of new crayons, it could wake the dead.