Sunday, August 30, 2009

School Tomorrow

The sweet girl is in bed, and the first day of school muffins* are in the oven. The living room and dining room (our main school spaces) have been cleaned. The white board has been scrubbed, a lovely blank space awaiting the three-pack of new white board pens I've been saving up for just this occasion (the sweet girl loves to draw on the white board, so we go through those faster than you'd believe!).

Yes, first day of school tomorrow!

And we're so excited. Our third year of schooling together -- well, our third official year. We've been learning/teaching since the day she was born.

I am such a creature of habit and routine. Rituals are important to me at a deep heart level. I considered writing about that, but then I came across this blog post at Holy Experience that said it all better than I could. I resonated with this post at deep heart levels, and I joyed to the fact that the writer quotes from one of my favorite G.K. Chesterton passages of all time, a passage I fell in love with about twenty years ago when I first came across it in college.

Happy ceremony; happy firsts and repeated firsts. Happy start of the school year to all.

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*A virtual gold star to anyone who can guess how our first day of school muffin tradition started. Clue: it came from literary inspiration.

5 comments:

Erin said...

Might it have something to do with When You Give a Moose a Muffin?

I love whiteboards. Dad has one in his office, and I always liked doodling on it when I was out there. It's so much cleaner than a blackboard, too - perfectly white again lickety-split, whereas getting a blackboard perfectly black again takes some doing...

Nathan goes back to school tomorrow too. Hope it's a great first day for all!

Beth said...

Hee! No, it doesn't have anything to do with "If You Give a Moose a Muffin" though that is our favorite of that particular series (we love his antlers). I'll see if anyone else comments/guesses in the next couple of days; if not, I'll post a comment with the literary inspiration.

Hooray for whiteboards and first days of school -- all things new and fresh and ready to write on. Have you gone back to the kiosk yet?

Erin said...

I'm thinking Thursday, though I don't have the official word yet; if I don't hear from them tomorrow I'll probably give them a call. Soon and very soon...

Now I could go for a muffin!

Beth said...

You're welcome to come over and have some of our's. They're yummy -- I made them with orange juice (so that gives them just a touch of citrusy sweetness). They're also chock full of raisins. :-)

Beth said...

I completely forgot to come back and leave the answer. :-) Anyway, our first day of school muffins were inspired by the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. In Heaven to Betsy, the first of the high school books, the Rays hire a new housekeeper ("hired girl") named Anna. She brings with her all sorts of customs (and stories) from the near-mythical family she used to work for, the McCloskeys. The McCloskeys, as it turned out, always had muffins on the first day of school! Hence it becomes a tradition for the Rays (and hence it has become a tradition for us!)