Off to school you go

Good luck to all the neighborhood Catholic school children off to their first day of school in their blue plaid skirts, their knee-length shorts, their white socks, and little cardigans. Off they go to geography lessons, the lives of the saints, and bologna sandwiches.

What do their parents expect to see in the photos they take of their young children shuffling nervously in the front yard, eyeing the minivan and their brand new backpacks sprawled on the side walk? Halos circling their heads? The faces of the doctors or dancers their sweet children may become? Or perhaps traces of the newborns they once held for the first time?

Good luck, little chickadees.

On your first day of school, the Dickinsonian oracle pronounces:

Best Witchcraft is Geometry
To the magician's mind -
His ordinary acts are feats
To thinking of mankind -
(E. Dickinson, 1158)