Over the next several weeks, homes all around our area will shift into a new gear and new year, as schools get up and going again. The first step has to do with supplies. When I was a kid, you got a couple pencils, a notebook, which, in my politically incorrect youth, was usually a Big Chief Tablet, some Crayolas...the hoity-toity kids had the 64 colors with the sharpener in the back...a ruler and that was about it. Today, the schools make sure we get lists...long lists of what's needed to excel. While helpful, these lists are also a little exasperating. You need a particular kind of three-ring binder...made with titanium in the former Yugoslavia. You need a disposable camera and a calculator so complicated that even NASA has passed it by in favor of a less intimidating model. You still need pencils and pens but also colored pencils, various bits of charcoal, paint-brushes and, if possible, a stoic, rural couple, one of whom is holding a pitchfork. You need to bring foam. Yes, foam. You need lots of file folders and notecards. You need a gallon of distilled water. You need safety goggles. (We've purchased enough pairs of goggles in the last dozen years or so, that, if bi-planes ever come back in style as the main mode of air transportation, we will be a very wealthy family, having cornered the market on eye-gear.) Over the years, I've learned that the list is only a starting point. The "I need this for school" refrain is ongoing and doesn't end until the last day of school. With four kids spread out in three schools, by the time my wife is done with the supply shopping, I feel like I am living in an Office Max. (She's a teacher, too, so that adds to pile of stuff. Although, this year, I have found the Mr. Potato Head "Let's Get Ready for the Day" poster helpful and the "What's The Weather" velcro-ized forecast board, invaluable.) Once you load the pack-mules necessary to carry all the supplies to school, you're about ready for the first day.

In our house, the first day went smoothly. All the kids got up on their own, or at first call up the stairs. This helpful eagerness usually lasts until day two. One by one, the four of them came down the stairs...washed, brushed, combed, dressed. They had some breakfast...grabbed their lunch bags...prepared the night before!...made a final check of back-packs and headed out the door. It was really quite phenomenal. When it goes that smoothly, it is the work of my wife. When it goes wrong, it is the work of her husband. For example, last year I was concerned about the kids being turned away at the door because I had not yet paid the additional fees...for books, activities, yearbooks, etc. With the four of them, this amounts to just a little less than the Gross National Product of Latvia. It took a lot of extra time, getting them all in disguises and then sneaking them in through the loading dock.

All of our kids are too old for us to actually walk them into the classroom anymore. When our oldest son, Alexander, was going to kindergarten, a co-worker warned me, that my wife and I would be crying when we left Alexander's classroom that first day. We didn't. Alex was so excited and ready for school we didn't have a moment's doubt. The same was true for numbers two and three. But, when we took our youngest to his first day of school, my wife did, indeed burst into tears as we got to the parking lot. "Well, it took four kids but it finally got to you, didn't it? Our last little one off to school...." I said, with tears welling up in my own eyes and a lump in my throat. "No, " she sobbed. "It's not that, exactly. It just hit me that now I'm stuck with just you at home."

Eventually, my wife solved even that problem by using the day for "work-related errands" and a "preparation meeting" with her co-teachers at a coffee shop. She left me at home alone but with a stack of construction paper, round edged scissors and a box of Crayolas...64 colors and a sharpener. I've come up in the world.