back-to-life shopping

Not to make too much of it, but for twenty-two years, and that would be since the age of four, I have gone "back to school." I distinctly remember leaving kindergarden preview day...the sun through the dusty windows, the fresh masking-tape marks on the carpets, the easel sides brimming with pungent acrylic sets. I skipped the entire way home, absolutely bursting out of my freshly-scrubbed skin.

The first day, I wore a hand-me-down plaid dress, but this wasn't just any hand-me-down. This was my mom's first day of school dress, pressed and wrapped to survive the years in her hope chest. The patent-leather belt had to be abandoned to accommodate my chub, but otherwise, I could have been Linda Sue starting school in 1953. Our kitchen wall exhibits snaps of the three Lee ladies on our respective first days, all sporting the plaid ensemble. First day outfits were always a big deal. After kindergarden we, thankfully, got to buy our own.

As I grew, negotiations for style and fit and length turned shopping trips into blood-baths. My mom shaking her head, lips tight, proclaiming my outfits inappropriate for a classy young woman. She always won those battles, but I fought my hardest, knowing that those first-day outfits were not just clothes, but somehow a bigger announcement of who I'd become over the summer, and who I'd be that year.

Fast-forward to Christy-fresh-from-college. Handed the keys to my own classroom, I spent these early fall days pulling down crusty old bulletin boards, adorning the walls with freshly pulled butcher paper, hand-cutting speech bubble posters for the parts of speech, crafting calendars with the days' plan. Chopping up days into hours, and hours into sections, and then waiting for that structure to come to life with students. While I waited, I shopped.

A good friend picked out pinched, pointy-toed heels for my first-day outfit. I thought I looked a little witch-like, but she deemed them perfect. "You need to look a little bit scary," she explained. "You're far too nice in normal shoes." I got through that first day and wobbled home to spend the afternoon and evening soaking the blisters off my feet. I had no regrets. I had stood tall, been slightly scary but simultaneously stylish. Everything would be alright.

I'm a very contextual person. When I transfered from high school to junior high, I bought some loud, bright, pattern-happy dresses because I considered them "junior high-ish." I soon realized that I didn't need to dress like Ms. Frizzle in order to teach 7th graders. I donated most of those clothes to goodwill. Still, it helped me to have some costumes to help convince myself that I could fit that new part I'd been cast.

Now, I'm not officially off the hook. I'm still in school, it just happens to be a low-residency program this time around, and I'm back to being a student. So I've had my "first day" at our residency in Santa Fe. I even picked out a 'first-day' scarf (as a nod to the fact that I am now in a low-res school, I figured an accessory was enough.)

But now it's almost September, and people are asking, in a sweet, conspiratorial tone, if I'm ready to go back to school. I say I'm not going. Then I feel guilty as soon as it's said, like I'm a deserter. And I panic: what if this is all wrong? Teaching fulfilled the performer part of me, the people-pleaser part of me. Even more significantly, it was an easy answer to the ever-present question: "What do you do?" Which, if I'm honest, I have to admit that I always hear as, "Who are you?"

I've daydreamed about "being a writer," since, well, as long as I remember. But facing that life is a totally different thing. It brings up the same kind of fear of failure, resistance, and pressure that teaching always brought. I guess because it brings along me. I haven't changed; I have the same worries and hang-ups as a writer that I had as a teacher. I also have the same strengths, the same drive and determination. I just tend to forget that in the rush of change.

Perhaps I need a talisman of some kind, a costume for this "back to life" season. An accessory, an entire outfit. Maybe some good shoes. See, I believe in the power of good teaching shoes. It doesn't matter if they batter your feet a little bit--the important thing is that they lift up your whole self and make you stand tall.

Good writing shoes...is there such a thing? It's quite nice writing barefoot, but I think I want some new shoes anyway, just to let my feet know that we've got a new direction.