Cheers to New Beginnings: Back to School

The “just right” outfit picked out; comfortable, cute and “appropriate” for professional company. Backpack ready with new pens and a clean journal.Lunch and snack packed in the sack that’s become comforting. Jif PB & Welch’s J, just like third grade. The only difference is that I, not my mother, packed it, in the home I own, leaving my own children behind as I walk out the door for my first day of school. Feeling the need to “rep” the real me in tandem with the me I want to be.

Backpack on, head up, comfy shoes, steady gait, walking tracker set (recording the mileage and calories for posterity). Five weeks of one-mile-each-way-walks in the hope of becoming a better me: a better teacher, better writer, better human.

Nostalgia’s gentle breeze takes me back over 20 years when I last walked to school, analyzing blowing leaves, locating that sound in the bushes and noting property markers with each step. Sunlight growing as shade fades, even at 8 am. In it all, excitement and nerves grow conjoined. Climbing the University stairs, felt like coming home. I am supposed to be in proverbial ivory towers pondering difficult questions and pushing myself intellectually.

When reluctantly responding to the inevitable, “What are your summer plans,” question and my “Going back to school,” response left many speechless and baffled, I felt no need to justify myself. No, I need no more letters behind my name. No, I won’t get a raise or promotion. With all due respect, what type of teacher would I be if I ceased to be a learner? How can I deny my spirit the cleansing push it’s longing for? How can I close the door on what might be beyond the University doors?

No amount of sand between my toes, poolside naps or daytime TV can feed my soul the way writing and learning can. (Plus, I can do all of that after school. So to new beginnings, I say, Count Me In!

What new beginning is waiting for you?