Aurora Sweet shares about her experiences picking up school supplies as a child.
The annual email with my children’s school supply list has arrived, signaling another school year. As a child, I loved getting my school supply list because I knew it meant my father would be taking me shopping. My father worked evenings and weekends as a child psychiatrist because that was when his young patients were available.
Even so, he never failed to make time to take my brother and me shopping for school supplies. To get supplies, my father took us to Larson’s, our local stationery store. Mr. Larson would greet my father with a handshake while puffing on his pipe. When it was my turn to shop, Mr. Larson would lift me up and sit me on the counter.
He would gather each item on my list, letting me choose the colors of my erasers and the styles of my folders. He would insist on certain types of pens or markers, but it never felt like an upsell. Once my supplies were piled up, I would get to spin the large prize wheel. Inevitably, the pointer would land on a Pink Pearl eraser or some other ordinary item.
Mr. Larson would simply “tsk” at this and adjust the wheel until it landed on something that he knew I would enjoy, like a package of tinfoil star stickers or calligraphy markers. As I take my own children shopping each August, I think of my father, whom we lost four years ago, and how he always made time to make sure we were ready for the school year. It wasn’t until I became a parent that I realized those trips were never really about school supplies.
There is no Mr. Larson waiting behind the counter anymore, and no prize wheel for my children to spin. But I hope that years from now, when they pick up a fresh box of pencils or a new notebook, they’ll remember something far more important than what we bought. I hope they’ll remember that before the first day of school, someone they loved made time for them. With a Perspective, I’m Aurora Sweet.
Aurora Sweet is an elementary school administrator, wife and mother of two who lives in Oakland. She still gets excited about finding the perfect pen.