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The first day of school and a jaunt down Memory Lane

September 17, 2026   ·   0 Comments

by James Matthews

My wife is sentimental. She’ll say she isn’t, but she is.

The first day of the new school year just happened, and she was taken aback by how fast time passes between milestones.

We have two school-aged children in the house. The missus, she has chalkboards for them to mark the occasion. The First Day of School is on those boards, and she writes the grade number on it. Decorates the boards. She has the kiddos stand in front of the house with their school backpacks, holding those start-of-year signs.

Photos that will be hidden from friends in their teenage years.

So every September her phone wallpaper and computer desktop images change to the new school year’s first day photo.

I am sentimental, too. And I’ll admit that. I’m sentimental to the point of becoming maudlin about memories of some places, people, and things that happened. I guess it’s a way to appreciate a moment. It’s a means to fully see or weigh or parse from all angles an experience. I keep people close that way through years and across distances.

My wife, she’s sentimental. And she’ll tell you she isn’t, as she rolls her eyes and tells you about how I do things like keep a dead grandfather’s lighter close even though I no longer smoke. Or the bottle cap from the last beer I had with an uncle before he died. Or how I take a rock, a piece of The Rock, every time we leave Newfoundland after a visit. I’ve tucked away little doodles done by my children and hope to have them someday tattooed.

So beautiful how she mockingly rolls her eyes at me and shakes her head

My wife, she has herself convinced that she isn’t overly sentimental because she won’t brood about a memory. Rather, she’ll tell you that she has a healthy appreciation for the things that would render me for hours sappy.

But here’s something for you: Should you meet the missus and get on the topic of how quickly time passes and how important it is to not lose sight of what is truly meaningful, ask her about nostalgia and sentimentality.

She will roll her eyes and tell you about how I dwell on memories, but not her, because an hour or a day will be wasted on yesterday when it is important to wring all you can from today. I think that comes from her years as a palliative care nurse. And here’s something else for you to do: After she goes on about living in the now, ask her how many photos she has on her phone.

My wife has 31,679 photos on her phone. But no, she isn’t overly sentimental.

Thirty-one THOUSAND, six HUNDRED seventy-nine. Much. That’s many photos. Images by which yesterday can be brought to the fore. And she does that whenever one of the kids asks her about something from before. That’s how they refer to it: Before. Back then. Used to. Had we or did we?

The missus won’t use the Cloud out of fear that the photos will somehow be lost forever. We have external hard drives on which she’s saved photos from previous phones. But she hasn’t done that over the last few phone upgrades. She imports photo libraries from the old phone to the new one.

My wife is more sentimental. She’ll while away hours scrolling through those photos. Her eyes wet over an easy smile, sitting as the world moves about around us. The kids will ask her if she remembers something specific, and she’ll say, Let’s take that walk down Memory Lane.

One past month of photos leads to another piece of the past, and then a huge slice of the present is gone. So you know how many steps it is down Memory Lane, that sentimental thoroughfare. It has 31,679 steps.

So far.

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