Going concerns: Back-to-school shopping

"Everybody in the car!" I hollered, from the bottom of the stairs. "And make sure you're wearing socks!"

And with that, we were off, the five of us (my husband could no more be convinced to join us on this outing than if I'd invited him to come look through wallpaper books and paint swatches). We were indulging the early-autumn ritual that makes its presence felt in every household with children at this time of year.

We were going back-to-school shopping.
This year, for the very first time, all four of my little scholars were tucking themselves into the educational fold. Strictly speaking, only three were returning (Kai, my two-year-old, was making her first encounter with the world of academe, courtesy of a two-morning-a-week nursery school program). Finn has graduated from that level to half-day junior kindergarten. Malindi, now in first grade, is going to school for a full day for the first time. And Kenya, the old pro at the school game, is entering grade four.

This evolutionary development has a lot of implications for our family: more homework to juggle, more lunches to make, more procrastinating during morning "rush hour." But for the moment, it means just one thing: more stuff to buy at our annual back-to-school foray to the mall.

The key, I decided, would be to start early in the day, when store and road traffic would be light, and the children would have energy to spare. After a hearty breakfast of Timbits and toast, we set off.

Our first stop, naturally, was the pet store. After all, what trip to the mall is complete without a rousing stroll through the aisles of furry, feathered and scaled creatures? But unless I wanted to dress my charges in tiny kitty-cat ball caps with holes cut out for their ears, or novelty doggy T-shirts, I wasn't going to find much in the way of appropriate school clothing here. So I had to insist we move on.

The shoe store was next on our list. Smelly, grease-stained summer sandals were slipped off, and spanking-white leather runners were slipped on (over the socks I'd insisted accompany us to the mall). It was an exchange that cost me more than $200. But at least we had the footwear done.

Out of the store, the kids raced ahead to the fountain, calling out for wish coins as they ran. As for me, left lugging four vast shoeboxes and regretting my choice to start with the heavy stuff, I brought up the rear.

We only made it into a couple more stores-picking up a zebra sweater for Kai here, a thermal lunch bag for Kenya there-before my little co-shoppers began to flag. And so it was up the stairs to the food court, for a rejuvenating encounter with mall food.

Sufficiently fortified, we returned to the task.

Several stores and swipes of the credit card later, and we were done. Everybody was kitted out, top to toe for the coming school year. The girls had matching "furry" shirts, striped ponchos and days-of-the-week underwear; Finn had a couple of pseudo baseball shirts and a groovy pair of jeans with a built-in belt-buckle key chain that he couldn't wait to attach a key to. Everybody had shoes and knapsacks and something cool that would be snatched from the drawer at the first hint of cool weather.

We were done for another year, and we had the huge collection of shopping bags to prove it. All that remained to complete the back-to-school shopping adventure? The weary wanderings through the mall parking lot in search of the car.