Every year on this day I get nostalgic. The yellow school buses are passing the house. The crossing guards are out in full force down School St. (Yes, that actually is the name of the street and it has schools piled one after another.) I’m sending texts to my daughters-in-law who are teachers wishing them a great first day and praying for them. And the Facebook feeds. Scrolling down and seeing how much my friend’s kids have grown and wondering how it all happened so fast. It’s almost like a national holiday for me.

Unfortunately, school shopping is a thing of the past. (I know. Hate me. But I loved school shopping.)  Every year I want to go to the local Target and just SMELL the school supplies. And touch them. The new notebooks and paper and pens and pencils and folders and CRAYONS. The smell of crayons. I could shut my eyes and be transported quickly back to Weatherly Elementary school and those metal desks and my plastic red book bag and my brand, new box of crayons.

Every year my mom would buy us a box of 64 crayons. I loved them. Like more than chocolate. Which is a lot. I’ve given boxes of crayons out at women’s retreats and love to watch as they smell them and gently open them taking their favorite colors out and reliving all the memories. It’s been my enough of my thing that one friend gave me a 64 crayon box Christmas ornament which I proudly hang on my tree every single year. Another friend gave me a sign that says, “Life is about using the whole box of crayons.” It hangs in one of my creative areas where I see it every day.

As much as I love those boxes of crayons, I’ve also come to learn a few things.

Not everyone got the 64 box of crayons. . . ever. I was surprised when I started giving them out at events when some women would hug them and say, “This is the first box of 64 I ever had.” What? Didn’t your mama get them for you? Every. single. year.  “We couldn’t afford them.” “No, I’m not sure why.” “Nope, we just had the little box of 24.”

It made me wonder. In my white suburban neighborhood smack dab in northern Alabama, were they required? Did my mom just splurge? I don’t remember. We were mostly daughters and sons of NASA engineers and sat in our classroom learning about verbs and adjectives while the ground would shake as the rockets were tested on Redstone Arsenal not so far away. We were privileged in a way we didn’t understand.

I still love those boxes of 64 crayons. And you can usually find a box laying around my house somewhere. But I also know that the things that can be the most nostalgic in life are also layered. Often those layers contain painful memories for others. It’s good to remember that. Not everyone is like us. Not everyone looks at the box of crayons with sweet, happy memories.

Let’s remember to hear each other’s stories. To listen well and to be willing to admit that the things we took for granted and loved might have been a source of pain for someone else. Maybe using the whole box of crayons means recognizing that very thing.