Still Going Back to School

I thought my relationship with the phrase “Back to School” had ended.

With the youngest child graduating from college the “Back to School” noise is just that and for the first time in almost 22 years we are going back to nothing.

No marketing phrase travels as far in the psyche of the American consumer as “Back to School.”

As a child it means new school supplies, re-setting the alarm clock, the pull of homework, uncomfortable clothes, and even more uncomfortable social situations. As you age antipathy rises as you come to realize it’s all marketing: “It’s not back to school, it’s the end of summer!”

Going off to college shifts the mind again, “Back to School” means the return to everything good in life: From friends and football to the disbelief that you only have 3 years, 2 years, 1 year left.

Then you walk off campus for the last time.

That first year out of college the wave of “Back to School” sales reach out from every media orifice, and you shrink from the shriek of marketing. Life and work and independence take on new meaning and rather than feeling left out, you realize you’ve escaped.

It turns out the first day back to school is just a Tuesday for you and most of the world.

When you have children of your own “Back to School” rises again. You look forward to that first day, meeting their teachers, navigating the halls and lockers. By the time your children reach their teens your heart leaps at the phrase, you mark your calendar for the day they leave your house and return to the school’s guardianship. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

And then they leave for college, and you undergo the familial earthquake, the push and pull of love, the emptying of the nest. As you approach the end of their four-year run it’s all about counting down the payments until that final one clears the bank.

And then it’s over.

Like the seasons of the year our perspectives bloom and fade. We may have hated the fall when we were kids because it meant the end of summer, but we learned to love it later in life when it meant cooler weather. Summer turned from the most important season of the year into a hot mess. Winter, beloved for those magical snow days turns into a season to avoid slipping on the ice.

And so it shifts again, but the noise still comes. No one told the marketers that I’m no longer their target. It now acts as a madeleine calling me back. I am transported to late August days, early mornings, the smell of pencil shavings, the spring in the seats of the yellow school bus, small chairs in small classrooms.

There is no back to school for this family. But it still calls me back.