9/2/2026
The end of summer and the arrival of September always bring back memories of back-to-school days, especially when my children were young.
The children would get ready for the new school year. For a child, September meant that everything started again—a fresh beginning. There were new teachers and classmates, sometimes a new backpack and new shoes, freshly sharpened pencils, and a new classroom. It was like turning to a new page.
In China, we called it 开学日. I still remember those days from my own elementary-school years.
When my children were in elementary school, I experienced those new beginnings alongside them. I was part of the annual back-to-school ritual—the preparation, the anticipation, and the feeling that something new was about to begin.
Now those years are long gone. Yet when September comes around, these seasonal memories come back, even though the people who once gave that season its meaning have grown up.
Perhaps what I miss is not simply the school days themselves, but what “back to school” represented: the feeling that life was beginning again.
As children, we had built-in new beginnings. Every September, we moved up a grade, increased in age, and began another chapter. Adulthood is different. There are no school calendars indicating a fresh start. We simply move from one day to the next, and sometimes life can begin to feel like one long continuation of the day before.
I wish we could keep that back-to-school feeling long after we leave school. Perhaps we can in our own way.
We could deliberately give ourselves a September every year—a time to start something new, change a routine, meet new people, begin a project, learn something we have never learned before, or simply look at familiar things with fresh eyes.
Maybe growing older doesn't mean we have to stop going back to school. We just have to choose our own first day.
No more new classroom, new teachers, or a freshly sharpened pencil. But we can still decide what we want to learn, where we want to go, and what new page we want to turn.
Perhaps every September can be a reminder of our own back-to-school day and we can still have the ritual and its meanings in our lives.
