My mother wrote letters to my grandmother almost weekly for many years; her perfect handwriting documented the quotidian events raising the four of us in the decades before email and the internet. They were carefully saved, and recently my mom sent one to me, dated September 13, 1977. In it, she writes about the days leading up to my first day of kindergarten.

In preparation for my new academic life, Grandma sent two dresses: One blue with off-white lace; the other a garage-sale find in green plaid with matching green knee socks. Mom recounted that the latter was so old that there were tiny holes where the hem was let down that she covered with mending tape. Of course, I liked the plaid one. “She likes the socks,” my mother wrote. The story goes that almost 6-year-old me argued with my mother for a while until I finally asked, “Whose first day is it anyway, your or mine?”

*First day of Kindergarten at Unionville Elementary School, September 1977*

I wore the green plaid dress

Two weeks ago, I took my sons to Target to pick out new shirts for their first day back to school and ABSOLUTELY NOT BUY TOYS; please don’t ask again. We made it past the T-shirts for Moms with phrases section (But First, Coffee, Amen), successfully navigated the school supplies (found the folders we needed, check!), and headed up to the kids’ clothing department.

Like their father, my boys aren’t super into fashion. My younger son goes through phases of monochromatic preferences. When he was about three, he spent dressed every day as Batman for more than a year. Lately, he’s more about function over style, preferring shorts that help him run fast during kickball games. My older son is decidedly less picky. Unless he’s specifically directed to do otherwise, he grabs the top shirt and the top pair of pants or shorts from his dresser, and voilá, an outfit is born. So you can guess they were both pretty darn excited about a back-to-school shirt purchase.

They wrestled with each other, and I pleaded for the 967th time for them to stop touching each other as I selected a few options in sizes that seemed about right. After a few minutes, they disappeared, and I found them giggling at a pantsless mannequin, each daring the other to touch the white plastic butt.

I dragged them back to the shirts. “What about some of these?”

My younger son pointed at the top shirt on his pile. “I like this one,” he said. “Am I done? Can we go look at toys?”

Ok, great, I said, but no, no toys today. He headed back to continue taunting the half-naked mannequin.

My older son looked ruefully at my choices. “Are those all of them?” he asked, glancing around. He spotted another shirt nearby. “What about that one?”

I picked it up and checked the tag. It was exactly the size he wore right now and not the larger size I’d hoped to purchase. Skeptical that it would even fit, I had him try it on. A perfect fit, at least today. He looked up hopefully.

“Come on, Mom, it’s my shirt,” he said. We got the shirt.

It was, after all, his first day, not mine.

My kids returned to their respective classrooms for their first week of full-time, in-classroom schooling in almost 18 months. They were back for a few days a week last spring, but this year felt so much like the first day in every way.

The night before the first day, we laid out the new shirts and matching shorts, complete with clean underwear and socks (just in case we might overlook these details in the morning). I tucked them into bed and kissed their heads, still wet from their baths. I asked them if they were excited about the first day of school.

“I guess,” the older one said. “But I like being with you.”

“No,” the younger one pouted. “Summer is more fun.”

The days are long, the saying goes, but the years are short. I was anxious but excited for my boys to get back to a little bit of normalcy after the past 18 months of remote and part-time school. I managed not to cry on the first day, as did my mom, so many years ago.

“I was brave, too,” she wrote back in 1977. “I didn’t cry,” as she watched me leap out of the car and run into the school, resplendent in my not-new-but-perfect-to-me plaid dress.

Here’s to all the bravery that this year will require, and to letting go, in all the ways that matter most.