School year is the real measure of time passing

There are many ways to acknowledge the passing of summer into winter – but few are more effective than the return to school.

Some may call it autumn but for those with children of a school-going age, it’s the season of school uniforms, new books, big bills and bedding in for the shorter nights.

The streets have been full for the past few weeks of harassed parents dragging their offspring through the rainy streets, laden down with bags from Anthony Ryan’s and books that weigh as much as the children themselves.

And what they don’t have time to realise is that they will miss this so much when it’s over.

The seasons lose just a little of their meaning when the natural order comes undone – and when the children no longer need uniforms, when book lists don’t have to be processed, when winter coats don’t have to be purchased, for some reason there’s an emptiness instead of relief.

This year was the first year in twelve that we haven’t had to go through this process for two – now it’s down to one in secondary and one getting ready for college where the uniform appears to be something only marginally more sartorial than pyjamas.

And it’s been like a foretaste of what lies ahead in two years’ time when both will have graduated to third level, leaving behind the perennial template of their youth.

Of course there are huge advantages in this – for one thing, you will no longer automatically be fleeced for your summer holiday because you’re not restricted to the school breaks – and going to university in your home town isn’t exactly on a par with emigration to Australia.

And yet it’s the closing of a huge chapter in their lives and yours – they don’t mind because a long and glorious road lies out in front of them, but you, on the other hand, miss the memories.

We had all ends of the scale in the office this week – first time for one father to have no one heading to secondary school with the last of the flock now in University; another daddy saw the last of his youngsters start his first day at school.

And for those at or near the other end, it still seems like only yesterday that they held you hand crossing the road to Junior Infants, little tykes in big blue jumpers and grey pants, looking like miniature adults except for the wide eyes and innocence.

The uniforms lost their sheen before Christmas and by the end of the school year, they were held together by occasional threads at the knees and elbows – all elasticity confined to history, with ink stains and incidental tears to tell the story of another academic chapter.

The books too hung together by a thread – despite the shocking price of something that could really be almost free if the Department of Education got its act together on a full move to on-line learning.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.