School shopping never grows old

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

Chicago in 1830 was a military post and fur station where wolves prowled the streets at night and only 12 families lived. Just 30 years later, it had grown to a city of 100,000 and hosted the Republican National Convention.

I learned this the other day while listening to a book on tape, ``Team of Rivals'' by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which is really all about Abraham Lincoln, but became for me just one more affirmation that change is not endemic to now. Cities grow. Businesses fail. The sand we build our lives on is always shifting. That's life. Nothing stays the same and the world in which we grow up, the world we know, is never the world in which we grow old.

Back-to-school shopping is one tiny exception. It's not a centuries-old tradition to buy new clothes and shoes and pencils. But it's been around long enough that I remember shopping with my mother and my children remember shopping with me. And someday, sooner than I like to think, their children will be adults who remember shopping, in a store or on the Internet, with them. And in a world where there are so many changes every day, this one simple constant, however small, stands out.

Both my daughters called me last week, the younger one first, her voice happy. ``Can you come over right now?'' she asked.

She'd been to the outlets and was dying to show off her bargains.

She had everything laid out on the couch when I got there, just as I used to lay out her new clothes and just as my mother had laid out mine. There were corduroy pants and jeans and long-sleeved shirts and socks and a blue sweater for Adam, who is starting kindergarten, plus a few things for Charlotte, who is two and going to ``school'' two mornings a week.

``Mine!'' Charlotte said, grabbing her tights to show me.

For my mother and me, back-to-school shopping was not a trip to a mall, but to Boston, to Conrad & Chandler. A few plaid dresses. A pair of leather shoes. Not a whole couch draped with clothes, but enough for my Aunt Lorraine to come running when my mother called to say ``Come and see what we bought.''

I sent my son off to his first day of kindergarten in an orange shirt and orange plaid pants I bought at Bradlees. They were Garanimals, a line of clothes that you could mix and match. He looked handsome in orange. I took a picture of him getting on the bus. I took a lot of pictures that day.

My daughter held up an orange shirt she bought for Adam. ``He picked it out himself. He looks good in orange, don't you think?''

Her sister called a day later. She'd been school shopping, too. ``Come see what I bought for Lucy,'' she said. And I raced over.

Yesterday, I told both of my daughters, ``Come see what I bought.'' I laid the clothes out: a shirt for Adam. ``A handsome shirt'' he called it, because it's blue and white pin-striped, and his mother said, ``You'll look handsome in that shirt, Adam.'' A dress for Charlotte, ``Mine!'' she said, grabbing it and strutting around. And two outfits for Lucy.

The cleaning of the closets has begun. The packing up of clothes that no longer fit. And all the mixed feelings that come with this. ``Can you believe she's getting so big, Mom?''

``None of his old stuff fits. He's outgrown even his sneakers.''

New clothes. Yellow buses. Little legs that can barely climb the steps. The world changes every day in countless ways. But not this world. September beckons and children with shining faces dress in their brand new clothes to follow.