In an otherwise unremarkable September morning, long before I learned to be ashamed of my mother, she takes my hand and we set off down New Jersey Avenue to begin my very first day of school. I am wearing a checkeredlike blue-and-green cotton dress, scattered about these colors are bits of yellow and white and brown.
These two sentences of “The First Day” by Edward P. Jones reminded me of how my mother was on my first day of school. The narrator was dressed by her mother in colorful clothes, but the tone of these sentences does not match the brightness of the clothes. When I read this story, I started to see how much work the narrator’s mother has put into the girl’s appearance. It shows the love the mother feels for her daughter, and it shows how the daughter feels later in life about her mother. I believe the daughter, later in life, writes this story in memory of her mother.