A New Backpack

“I think I’ll just wait here now,” Annie said. She opened the inside door and stood there looking through the screen door at the mid-May leaves on the trees.

“It’s not time to go to school yet,” I said. “You have ten more minutes. Why don’t you come sit in my lap and wait until it’s time?”

I went over to the wing chair, and she climbed up in my lap. I didn’t realize I was incomplete until I felt her little six-year-old body warm against mine and smelled her clean hair. To help pass the time for her, I clipped her fingernails and her toenails. I asked her if she had her lunch packed and her teeth brushed. She nodded. We sat there together for a few minutes, then she jumped up and hurried out of the room.

“Where are you going?” I called out as she ran up the steps.

“To check the clock in the kitchen.”

I smiled. We kept our other clocks set a few minutes ahead; the digital one on the stove was real time. When it said “8:10”, it was time to go to school. I came upstairs too. Annie was standing in the middle of the floor looking at the clock. It said “8:08”.

“1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10…” Annie said, counting as fast as she could. She stopped when she got to 60. The clock still said “8:08”

“You have to count a little slower, if you want to count the seconds,” I said. “Like this: one thousand-one, one thousand-two, one-thousand three….”

“Oh,” she said and started to count like that, as fast as she could. She got to one thousand-twelve and shouted, “It’s eight-oh-nine! One more minute!” She wiggled and jumped in her excitement.

This was a special day, but not because it was Monday or that it was her birthday. This day was special because she was going to take the backpack she’d bought on Saturday to school. It wasn’t just any backpack; it was a pink BRITNEY SPEARS backpack with a pull handle and wheels. It had Britney’s name on it and two pictures of her, one on each side. There was a place for books and a place for lunch and another zippered pocket for other things. It cost twenty-five dollars, which she paid herself from money saved up from her dollar-a-week allowance and all her birthday and Christmas money.

That afternoon, after she came home from the backpack store and had gotten her bathing suit on, she put six books in the center part of her new backpack, plus some papers and three pencils in one of the side pockets. She rolled it downstairs and out to the carport door.

“What are you doing, honey?” her mother when she came downstairs.

“I’m going to take my backpack with me to the pool, Mommy.”

“Oh honey, I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” her mother said gently. “It could get wet, and the chlorine might cause it to fade. I think you’d better leave it home.” And that’s what she did that Saturday, though she cried a little on the way to the car.

“IT’S EIGHT-OH-TEN!” Annie shouted. “TIME TO GO TO SCHOOL!” She ran downstairs to tell her brother.

“IT’S EIGHT-OH-TEN, BOBBY!” Annie shouted when she reached the doorway to the playroom where Bobby was busy killing aliens on the computer. “TIME TO GO TO SCHOOL!”

“I know, Annie. I know!” he said. “And it’s eight-ten, not eight-oh-ten.” He was in third grade, so he knew pretty much everything about time.

He logged off the computer, then went to the kitchen and got his backpack – black and red with not even a trace of Britney Spears – or any other girl. By the time he came outside, Annie already was standing at the entrance to the path to school. Her new backpack was behind her, handle out and wheels down. She was grinning with pleasure at the sight of herself. She stopped for a moment to argue with Bobby about who was first that day, and her smile went away when she found out he was.

“But Annie,” I said, “That means that you’ll be first the last week of school.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

 She smiled again and started off, following Bobby along the winding path through the strip of woods that separated our yard from the school’s. Her backpack bounced happily behind her as it went to school for the first time.

 I smiled as I watched them leave, then went back inside. In the far corner of the kitchen, a Barbie backpack lay face down on the floor, discarded and forgotten. Sic transit gloria mundi.