About the First Day of School Photo

Piggybacking on the notion from Monday's post (here) about how Mom was hardly ever the one capturing our family photos, or any photos in general...There was the First Day of School photo. This photo she made to be her annual "thing". It just kind of started that first year when we went off to kindergarten (which was actually captured on the steps of the school bus & not at the front door of our house) & it remained throughout the years, even when we headed off to college (although if memory serves me well, the college photos were taken at college, & therefore missing the front-of-the-house-charm 😂😜).

Who we were at that age, what we looked like, & how we were, remained pretty much the same in this photo of us (separate photos for each of us) standing right in front of our front door, right next to our mailbox mounted on the brick (over our right-hand shoulder) & on the other side, the house number posted in big bold white digits (over our left-hand shoulder). We'd either be holding onto one of these (likely a new one for the year as ours typically didn't hold up from year to year), or it could've already been on our backside, feeling cheesier than cheesy can feel (our facial expressions, & for sure our body language spoke volumes of this).

There she was, capturing this moment for us. Even though we'd still be taking the time to finish eating our Breakfast of Champions (probably some of this) as Dad's baking smorgasbord's didn't tend to begin until later in September, Mom would be fidgeting with the camera's focus; she'd have it all set up & ready to go. She wouldn't want to miss it; because it'd become tradition there were times when, rather than wait until we'd finished in the kitchen, & then in the bathroom too, with scrubbing our teeth & getting our minty-fresh breath, she'd have us pause & step outside (I don't think it ever rained the morning of our first day of school 😲).

After we did miss the bus the first day I headed off to high school, she'd remind us to leave enough time & definitely be ready for her to capture our photo, leaving that little bit more time before we truly needed to be headed down the street for the bus stop. We pretty much looked the same for our annual school photo which was taken at our school just a month, maybe two, later.

It didn't matter. Our family photo albums (they're this style & fit our many standard 4x6 images well) reflected a certain pattern & these First Day of School photos played their part in balancing the cosmos of this pattern. Each of our birthdays were documented in succession. Family vacations were too (including our camping trips 😂). Each holiday would be captured on 35mm film, including Mother's Day & Father's Day...& if a friends & family gathering transpired for any "red, white, & blue" holidays, then there'd likely be at least one photo in our album land marking the occasion. Weddings, if we'd attended any, were special, mostly because they didn't always happen at the same time of the year 😂, establishing a unique cut in the flow of the typical "Annual Family Calendar of Photos". For instance, a cousin got married in January, & yet we were used to our "year of photos" beginning in February with my brother's birthday. That year the cousin began the year, so after our family Christmas photos were included in the line-up, next up wasn't his birthday cake. Instead, it was a bride & groom walking down the aisle.

We could always count on the First Day of School photo, right there in the photo album, right before any beginning-of-Fall weddings & us in our Halloween costumes for the year...That is, until we graduated.

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