Back to school thoughts by Shinazy
On Facebook I watched my friends with school-age children chat about all that must be done in preparation for sending their children back to school. In addition to buying clothes that fit better than the ones they bought 6 months ago, they must buy backpacks, classroom supplies, sports equipment, study guides, and textbooks.
How different the current back to school activity is from when my grandmothers or I returned to school.
Nana was born in the Philippines, on the island of Mindanao, in a tiny village. During one shopping trip to get my sensible Saddle Oxfords, she reminisced how she looked forward to the new dress that signaled the first day of school. Lola, her mom, saved the colored parts of the burlap sacks that contained their flour and sugar and hand-stitched the pretty back to school outfit. Nana said when she walked to the missionary school, although her bare feet were strolling along a dirt road, she felt like a princess.
For my other grandmother, Pauline, aka Gigs, going back to school was a frightening experience. Even though she was the 2rd generation born in San Francisco, she arrived at school speaking only French. Every year the back to school time meant trying to remember the English words she learned before summer break. She always felt like an outsider and never enjoyed school.
My going back to school was less terrorizing, I say ‘less’ rather than ‘not’ because it involved clothes shopping, lots of it. I was the girl with perpetually scraped knees and preferred climbing trees to shopping. However, the ‘Fall Fashion Season’ was important to my mom, so shop we did. She would find the adorable wool sweater-set with matching wool pleated skirt, the stylish wool jumper, and the charming wool knee-high socks. Now, if we lived in New York City all this wool would have been perfect, but this was San Francisco where winter low temperature hovered in the 50′s. I may have been over-heated, but I looked like a proper young lady.
I wonder how the children of my Facebook friends feel about getting ready for the new school year. Or, regardless if it is today or yesterday, the back to school activity involves a time of change and we each embrace, resist, or tolerate it in our own way.
photo by Oilbac
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I was just chatting with a friend on the subject of school clothes. One side benefit to sending my kids to independent private schools was uniforms… euphemistically referred to as “the dress code.”
It was great. We spent a little more money at the beginning of the academic year, because we had to purchase ten of everything for each child (2 week’s of school clothes). But that was it.
No crises of over-choice. The dress codes had a little latitude, but not enough to give anyone a headache. Buy a few in khaki and a few in navy.
Once completed, clothes shopping was over for the entire academic year, with the exception of shoes (outgrown) and socks (worn out).
To my mind, the trade-off of exorbitant tuitions vs back to school shopping stress was worth it… Except for the exorbitant tuitions LOL – mms
Good story Shinazy.
My mother worked in a clothing store ( the 50′s Woman) and every year I love shopping for school. Buying clothes was more important than going to school. I can still remember leaving the shoe store wearing my new shoes.
As a high schooler, back to school meant one very big thing, and of course as a guy, it had nothing to do with clothes. It meant the end of two football practices a day (alternately known as double sessions, two-a-days, and/or Hell’s 2 weeks). Replacing the smell of warm grass with newly sharpened pencils.
I remember the first day of first grade at St. Williams in Philadelphia. I was five. We stood in a gloomy hallway and were directed into separate classrooms by gender. In my room there were 80 boys and one nun, Sister Maria Lane. Eighty! It was 1954. It was an Irish Catholic neighborhood. There were a couple of houses on my block where it was hard to get an accurate count of the kids. But we all looked good in our uniforms, scrubbed clean and shining!