2000-09-01 - 23:02 MDT

September 1, 2000

Blown Rose

Remember when September was the start of school

Remember ?

Vacant the playground, the pool

In September, remember ?

Then the eye of the heart,

Started the blood pumping,

Right from the start,

And kept us jumping,

Then our "gettery,"

Slipped into gear,

Finding a sweety and not far behind was a "forgettery,"

And the first part of the year

Becoming a smudge,

At last in school did we drudge.

Remember September ?

Doggerel over but memories are flowing. The new clothes the blister makers, new shoes, the darn long stockings never quite meeting the knickers. How we boys longed for long pants and being "grown up."

The smell of an idle school newly dusted and the wooden floors polished with that redolent polish made ready for the influx of scampering kids.

The new books to explore, the new teacher to scope out, the new note book and pen & pencil set. A new set of windows for us to gaze into the yet unknown. We would see a schoolmate new to us, transferred from another school in town -- becoming sometimes a friend or a rabid competitor.

Plotting new modes of mischief to perpetrate. The new help in the lunch room with a new dietician producing new smells to tickle and tantalize our noses.

The new things in shop, in art, in home ec., in band. We got a start on understanding the universe of our neighborhoods and the people therein, and where our position was in the dichotomy between grown ups and ourselves. The light began to slowly dawn in Middle School (we used to call it Jr. High and it went through 9 th grade) and we began to grow yet more in High School. Do I remember September, oh yes. I remember too, when things began to green up in spring how we longed for the respite afforded by the coming of June. I think humans long for change as long as they are the cause and desirer of that change. And we remember the things past, as in our flower garden -- the blown rose.

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