It's Labor Day, and although schools now begin sometime in August, I still think of Labor Day as the last day of summer, with Fall beginning on Tuesday Back to School. Sometimes we drove back to Baltimore on the Labor Day weekend so that we could have the last few hours in New Hampshire. Maybe that's why I always felt unprepared for school. Maybe in reality we stayed in New Hampshire until the first Monday in September, but maybe it was only in my mind that I didn't arrive in Baltimore until just before school.
My recollections are of wearing fall clothes that first Tuesday, but Baltimore in September is still summer, and summer clothes would have been more comfortable. And I recall never feeling as if I had the right notebook or pencil, and somehow scrambling to get what I needed - or perhaps what was popular - after school started, and thus being one step behind for the whole year.
I remember New Hampshire as always being perfect. Everything I needed was right there, always, year after year. There wasn't any start to it, I slipped into my real skin, as into a perfectly cool lake.
Thank you for this post.
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