Three little words that every adult longs to hear: back to school. Words infused with possibility, fear and the smell of strawberry rubbers, they perform a kind of time-machine spell, almost entirely dissociated from a parent’s reality of the new autumn term. Rather than simply a period in which Tesco does a decent two-for-one deal on notebooks, “back to school” is an existential obsession. Without wanting to sound like an ageing cheerleader caked in nostalgia, this time of year has started to inspire in me a kind of yearning for a grown-up equivalent, an opportunity to return, refreshed, and start again.
To bin the uniforms we’ve grown out of, in my case dresses that, instead of making me look cheery and smart, on a body reshaped by time’s mean claw, give me the appearance of Nicholas Lyndhurst dragging up for a Goodnight Sweetheart special. To replace them with new ones suitable for a new term. A chance to look closely at oneself, a year older, and consider who you want to be.
To prepare to learn, to rake your sun-bleached mind in advance of new knowledge. But rather than phonics and the capital of Luxembourg (Luxembourg City), new depths of self-knowledge garnered from a year of middling trauma and irritating WhatsApps. And facts! Boring, complicated historical facts, read and then reread, and then read out loud again slowly so you’re forced to finish the paragraph and not vaguely spin away to your phone when the big words start. But facts that will illuminate the confusion of the current, shall we say, situation? Wikipedia pages covered in thick furs of dust must be uncovered and studied, along with the voting records of minor Tory MPs, until words that last week sounded like suburban stations quickly erected on the edge of overpopulated cities now roll off the tongue.
To open a new notebook and, on those clean pages, doodle with a brand new pen as if walking a new route to an old place. This morning I watched a “superzoom” video on Instagram that zoned, in a sweeping close-up, into the tip of a Biro, continuing past the wet blue of its nib, and into the speckled metal, and then into its silvery DNA so we were right there, inside the unchewed aluminium. And the deeper we zoomed the more it reminded me of another video I saw recently, a timelapse journey to the end of the world, through the years when black holes begin to die and there is nothing, and time becomes meaningless. I love stationery! Of course I do, it provides an illusion of order and the promise of creative fulfilment with change from a fiver. And once you realise the whole world is in the tip of a Biro, all metaphors aside, the value of a new pencil case leaps lightyears.
To meet new classmates, who may not end up our best friends forever, but who travel noisily with us through what seem to be anonymous corridors, but in time will be infused with a glorious sentimentality, re-conjured whenever we smell custard. All the strangers that shape your life, with their bitter asides that mean you can never again wear yellow, and the casual ways they introduce you to unlikely fruits, and the small movements of a ponytail that years later contribute to an ingrained sexual “type”, they keep on coming, if you let them.
To meet new enemies, whose very presence makes your skin feel like a flip-sequin T-shirt rubbed to the silver side. Here are the fools who will propel you screaming into the next phase of your life, in part by reminding you of the bits of yourself you are most ashamed of and in part because their very awfulness gives you the energy to burst bitchily from the cosiness of a house where everyone agrees. A good enemy is worth two decent friends – they refine your personality, sharpen its edges and provide conflict, essential for the dramatic narrative you are so sorely lacking, sorry.
To be the bigger person, and treat those coming up behind you with that glorious combination of patronising glee and genuine warmth. You were them once, awkward in an oversized blazer, a glamorous crop of spots marching across your chin. You too stood on the steps, pretending to read something very complicated on your phone, while praying for an opening, a drop of kindness. Having gone through a period where to stand in a bar with young people would spin me between extremes of melancholy and humiliating attempts to prove my worth, I have now rolled comfortably into the stage of life where I can sit among the young with no desire to seduce or compete, only mother. I will make myself hoarse shouting relationship advice across sticky tables until it becomes clear it would be easier to simply ask the DJ to turn the music down, which I will also do. I will solemnly pat directional haircuts, and ask after millennials’ parents just as they come up on the very newest drug. This is one of the privileges of age that must be embraced at every opportunity. And a reminder that “back to school” is nothing more than a state of mind.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter@EvaWiseman