La reentrée

The streets are quiet during the day. The children have disappeared to the reentrée, their new book bags stuffed with cahier (notebooks). Soon they will be filled with neat homework, reports, exercises and messages from the teacher to be signed by the parent and returned, pencils, pens, erasers zipped in equally new pencil cases selected from the various stores catering to the back-to-school classes. When I walk to the shops, to the cafés, I miss seeing the children playing with their dolls, their balls and bikes spread on the street.

I think of my first few years at school. We were supplied with a new box of crayons, one for each colour of the rainbow plus brown and black, thick crayons, that only later did I learn was to help small muscle co-ordination. I loved their pristeenness, but not as much as I loved the much more graceful Crayolas at home which could give me results with their many shades. But even more I loved the names. Burnt sienna had a magic that a brown would never have. Carnation pink brought thoughts of spring when I was home from a school day cancelled because of a snow storm. Thistle and maize felt good rolling around my tongue. The thin crayons felt better in my hand, looked as if there were unlimited possibilities spread out on the table that the school crayons, stubby and boring just couldn’t provide.

I don’t know if the children, now sitting in desks in the school next to the Shoppi plaza or over beyond the Marie have crayons. Years from now they may remember the backpack bookbags, the agendas with the covers of current heros or floral designs to write down homework assignments, the Mariefountain notebooks with their large coloured square covers and quadrangle insides (lined paper is rare not the like the yellow we used for first draft and white for final corrected copies to be handed in) and the pencil cases.