September is the schoolest month

 The light is misleading these mornings.  

Through most of the summer, I can tell if it's a sunny morning when I rise at my usual time, between 6:30 and 7.  Now the light is pre-dawn grey; the summer is slipping away.

Today, I get out of bed, and for the first time in weeks, reach for my cozy robe against the chill.

First day of school in most of Canada; it was yesterday in the UK, where they don't observe the Labour Day holiday.  My social media feed is full of children and adolescents, offspring of younger relatives, friends and acquaintances, lined up in their front halls, or in front of their houses.  The English students are in school uniforms; the Canadian ones in brand-new ensembles.

My former neighbour in Hades posts a photo of her boy, born after our retreat from Ottawa. With a shock, I recognize the school in the background.  It's my daughters' elementary school, towards which I made the daily climb, about a kilometre up the hill, twice a day for the better part of eight years:  the four years elder daughter attended it, and the four years younger daughter haunted it.

Well, I knew my neighbour's son would wind up there eventually.  It's just that in the pre-dawn shadows three time zones away, I find myself re-living memories - most of which I don't treasure.  The years of volunteerism scoured away any rosy notions about school days that had survived my own less-than-stellar experiences. I briskly remind myself that I don't have to do that, nor go there.

The sun is bright and high, when I emerge, on the way to setting up Demeter's breakfast.  A phantom appears at the corner of the block which separates my home from Demeter's.  It's a mother, escorting a young pupil, while pushing younger sibling in a stroller.  They're bound for elder daughter's former elementary here in Victoria.

 I spent three years on that trek, twice a day, with another young scholar and sibling in a stroller. The confronting vision and the accompanying memories are poignant, but palatable.

I cast a brief thought to the excited little boy pictured by his mum outside of that other school in Hades.  It's all I can afford, but I do wish him well.