SEPTEMBER SMILES
I love the fresh September air and the fact that my job as an Assistant Principal allows me to live, over and over again, the joy of going back to school. Much as I love summer warmth, blue chlorine pool water and salty oceans, and the freedom of longer daylight hours, I always loved that return to the classroom. The smell of chalk dust, freshly sharpened pencils, stacks of blank notebooks and books with tight spines. That little plastic zippered pencil case that held pencils, pens, erasers, rulers and filler paper hole reinforcements, whose outside decorations changed each year to match the current fashion trends. And speaking of fashion--there was such fun in shopping for school clothes and wearing dresses and new shoes after a summer of shorts and flip flops. New teachers, new friends, and new skills and concepts to learn. Seeing friends I hadn't seen all summer and strolling down the school corridors with their faint odor of disinfectant and the mirror glow of newly polished floors.

Though these days I work all summer I still get that fresh punch of newness with a new school year. And I always felt September was the start of the year and a time to make new resolutions and fresh starts. But now the draw of blank notebooks holds even more. As a writer I like filling the straight blue lines with flowing poetic verses and dramatic fiction. Or opening a new notebook to begin scribing stories about my life that will keep me alive even after I leave this earth.

September is clean and crisp, a chance for new beginnings, an opportunity to make some new decisions about what to write, what to wear and how to make myself a better woman. I invite you to make a few resolutions of your own about how to live the way you want to live. Why wait till January when your muse is buried in snow?