That Privilege…and Others

It was my first week of teaching after a two-years-plus hiatus. I admit that I was nervous and ambivalent, but a few days before classes started, a certainWilliam helped me put it in perspective with a few simple words. “I envy you that you have that privilege,” he wrote.

And a privilege it is. I am humbled by the trust of sixth graders, so readily given to me, and I will try to do my best by them. I am touched by their enthusiasm and earnestness. I love the eager way some raise their hands to contribute comments, whether relevant or random. I am amused by the Tom Sawyers who pack their backpacks a little too soon and dart out of the room at the end of the period like small caged animals who finally see an opening. I appreciate the reprieve into silliness, the chance to linger at the sunny shore of not-quite-grown-up, the shift in energy and worldview that is palpable the moment one walks on campus.

 So it was a week of many gifts, both here at home and there at the school. A few glimpses:

Donna hooked up the coffee pot and made coffee for us just like old times and we walked across the field each day for lunch where we all sat outside at redwood tables like friends gathered for Thanksgiving.

I stood in the sunlight during recess with Treebeard, hearing the background music that is the sound of kids laughing and shouting.

Asixth grade girl showed me a poem she had written about being awake in thenight. It was a lovely little poem, and I could certainly relate, and I felt honored that she had shared it.

A guest in my Friday afternoon elective class proved one again that some people are simply kind and generous for no reason at all but that they are kind and generous.

In other news: I submitted three, count ‘em three, essays about what the Inauguration means to me, none of them very good, I’m afraid, but all heartfelt indeed. They were my entries in the quest for that Golden Ticket, the glimmering dream of airfare, actual tickets to the Inauguration, and lodging in D.C. It was a good excuse to try to sort out my thoughts about how much it matters and why, but it was also a manifestation of my belief that if you never send a ship out none will ever come in. I realize that millions of people will have entered the contest, many with more compelling stories than mine, and better writers, too. “You have such an active fantasy life,” said someone who knows me very well, “They’ll get essays from the great-grandchildren of slaves, or people who are dying of cancer and this is their final wish.” I know that. But I feel good for having given voice to my thoughts, and in a funny way I feel even more connected to the event now. So hitting “send” from that website is hereby counted among my sweetest moments of the week.

And I went for an after-school walk with my friend Kelley at Alisal. She let me borrow one of her t-shirts, such a sisterly girlfriend gesture.  At one point we saw the bright full round of a perfect white moon: the Wolf Moon, or the Moon After Yule.

With that moon of course there came low tides. Monte and I rode our bicycles along the beach on Saturday all the way to Government Point.

I fell behind him for a time, following his straight and confident track, watching him pedaling along nonchalantly with his hands at his sides, still cool after all these years.

We rounded a bend and it looked like heaven shining before us. A handful of lucky souls were walking about and exploring the rocky, mossy undersea revealed.

The colors of their clothing, the warmth of the light, the mostly empty beach, somehow it all imparted a nostalgic 1960s feeling to the scene.Blessings, I thought, are unfairly distributed, but when you are among the recipients, you might as well enjoy them.

On the way back there were children playing in the sand and I watched a little girl with a bright beach towel slung across her shoulders running as fast as she could, and the towel lifted and flew behind her like the cape of a super-hero, and she looked happy and invincible, and I remembered running and flying too.

There was a moment, also, right by the house, when I was trimming the Mexican sage and watering plants and just generally tidying up outside. I suddenly remembered how Terra loved to follow me around or just sit nearby while such puttering occurred, and I had the most palpable sense of her presence, so real that for an instant I almost thought I’d seen her from the corner of my eye. I missed her then with a terrible pang, but I remembered what it was that I admired about her most: her absolute, unequivocal love of life. Even in her final days, she would have known that sitting there in the sun right near her people with life buzzing all around her was as good as it gets, and she would have stretched out, made herself comfortable, and immersed herself in it fully.