I am enamored of the academic calendar.
It’s no accident that I’m a mother and a teacher and that our family’s days, therefore, are governed by the schools up until a certain bright morning in June when they suddenly are not.
And also, that I’m a writer, so that the rest of my days aren’t governed, exactly, by anything.
Or anyone.
(Which can be problematic, but that’s a different post.)
In spring it is as if there’s a wasp in my heart — so crowded are our days with field trips and events and celebrations.
A piano recital here, a field day there. A class play here, an art exhibit there.
And, throw into the mix all of my own students’ portfolios awaiting my critical eye.
A wasp, I tell you. It’s enough to make a person swoon.
Only in the heat of it, I realize that some of the buzzing isn’t overwhelm.
Some of it’s excitement.
We are almost to those hours of watermelon and bathing suits and playing kick-the-can long past bedtime.
I can smell the sticky sweetness in the air.
And some of it is pride.
That my students created work they didn’t know they had in ’em, and revised it to levels they thought they couldn’t reach.
That the school kids I visited this year all know an author now, and all have made metaphors, and all have made rhyme.
That my daughters negotiated the highs and lows of another grade.
That they have an understanding of liquids and solids, and story arcs, and long division.
That they have friends and teachers over whom they will cry when saying goodbye.
That we, as a family, got the lunches packed and alarms set and forms filled out, pretty close to on time, all year long.
And then some of it is wonder.
At the passing of time.
That I’m not as young as I once was, nor is my husband, nor our friends or colleagues or students.
And, even more stunning, neither are our girls.
It’s a lot to reckon with, which is why summer vacation is a very, very good idea.
In the meantime, a poem.
A poem called Graded Paper by Mark Halliday.
I love this one.
Graded Paper
On the whole this is quite successful work:
your main argument about the poet’s ambivalence–
how he loves the very things he attacks–
is most persuasive and always engaging.
At the same time,
there are spots
where your thinking becomes, for me,
alarmingly opaque, and your syntax seems to jump
backwards through unnecessary hoops,
To read this rest, click here.