Harvest Time

Scan Facebook for two minutes and you realize what the farmers have known for thousands of years--now is time for the harvest, to reap what has been sown all these long years.  Our urban fields, though, are scattered with half-filled corrugated boxes and curled photographs collecting dust in the corner.  Our crop--our children--now boxed up and heading to their respective silos to see what they are worth.

Back at the ranch?  Well, at first, we stare giddily at these newly available acres of land, giving over to our imaginations.  For now, at least, mine shall lie fallow, resting quietly after all those years of Cover Girl, clutter and clothing.

In the midst of all of this disarray, what I also have discovered is what no one has had the decency to tell me--or perhaps I wasn't listening.  Beyond selling off the kid crop, I'm also spending heaps of my time tinkering with a whole host of other challenges, from sputtering appliances to my own version of Creeping Charlie, not to mention the death and decline of people I really love.

Frankly this whole "circle of life" thing has outgrown its cuteness. . . . which is why, earlier this week,  I reached for the soothing salve of Joni Mitchell.  Long neglected on my music shelf, Joni still manages to pack a punch where I have needed it most.  In my early-morning drives to work, she has become the warm compress I place upon the sorrow and exhaustion that have inexplicably pooled in my calves.

Slowly, Joni's lilting (and, as Mark would say, generally annoying) voice has jarred loose some of the difficult detritus that has built up within me, and, while she occasionally leaves me dewy-eyed, I am grateful for the relief.

I'm not sure how much longer I will let Joni accompany me to school.  She is, after all, kind of a downer.  But she's also a heck of a writer--something I'd forgotten over the years.  And there is something to be said about the power of a minor chord.

For now,  it makes sense that albums titled "The Hissing Lawns of Summer" and "For the Roses" fill these post-harvest days of mine while the sun anchors itself ever closer to the horizon, the morning shadows sleepily stretching across newly-harvested fields.

And me?  My thoughts begin to turn to the ungerminated seeds that beckon a new planting season, a handful of fresh ideas anxious to break through.

Is It Any Wonder?

Early morning at Woods Park has its usual suspects, some of whom have real names, while others go by more descriptive terms:  "Man with Slight Limp," "Lady Who Calls for Opus the Bird,"  "Woman With Dog Named Thor, Who Wonders Why He's So Aggressive". . . .  Richard (his actual name) is a steady presence, always in khakis, usually carrying a coffee mug, and sometimes plugged into a radio.  And he always comes prepared with a story.  Or two.  Or three.

This morning, as Finn and I crossed 33rd Street, I was stunned by all the leaves in the street.  Specifically, all the leaves in the middle lane.  I stood there at the intersection, scanning 33rd for any sign of a wayward leaf resting in another lane, and could find none.  The sight left me a little breathless.

I bumped into Richard shortly after crossing into the park and pointed out to him the crazy "leaf" gathering.  He immediately began to offer an explanation.  "When cars drive by--really, it's just like what happens with snow--but the. . . "  And I quit listening.  See, I wasn't pointing out the sight so that he might explain it.  Really, I just wanted someone with whom I could feel wonder.

After we parted ways, I started to think about what he'd done, and how often I--as a teacher--had done the very same thing.  How many times do our students just want to be heard?  Or just want someone else with whom they can feel wonder?

We teachers can't seem to help ourselves--we just like to answer things, even when there is no question that has been posed.  We are, by nature, elucidators, explainers, enlighteners.

Annoying.

When the kids come back this Wednesday, I hope I remember my early-morning encounter with all those leaves in the middle lane and how magical it seemed to me.  And I hope I remember how unnecessary Richard's explanation was.  How it missed the point--and the moment--entirely.

I hope I remember to just listen and let them wonder a little.

Google-Mapping My Life

If there were some sort of personal satellite hovering above us, recording the paths of our lives, I suspect the images it would send back to us would be far more crosshatched than we'd have ever guessed.    Our lives are rife with crossroads, yet only a handful of those intersections tend to grab our attention.

Much like our famously underutilized brains, maybe it turns out that we only use 10 percent of our eyesight, missing most things that are right before our eyes.

For whatever reason these days, my eyes seem to be spying more intersections than usual.

Life and death, work and play, childhood and adulthood, inside and out--all these seemingly opposite things keep meeting up at the corner of Jane and Holt with surprisingly regularity, and I'm not always sure where to turn my attention.

One moment, it is on son Eric, who heads to Southeast High School Monday to learn what it means to be a teacher.  How can this even be possible, I wonder to myself, only to follow the question with another.  How could it not?

Heading down the road to the next intersection, I find myself considering daughter Allison, whose own life is rife with transitions, both physical (she moves to an apartment on Friday) and academic (she begins her new Film major in two weeks).  My reaction to both stands pretty firmly in "Yipee!"  but there are moments when I wonder if the price I pay for a more picked-up house is the yawning absence of that funny, strange spirit.

At work, my map is filled with all kinds of new roads--some more paved than others.  Navigating them, I see new faces and new job responsibilities,  as well as a formerly-favorite road now closed off to me as others begin driving down it.

Running my fingers along the larger map before me, I notice darker intersections that I'd rather pass over, ones filled with friends' cancer and death and the general decline of my parents' health.  Despite my inclinations, I click on "Street View" and try to face these with greater attention to detail.  They are, I know, the intersections that benefit from a closer view, even if I'd rather avert my eyes.

Sometimes, I feel like I've just entered Los Angeles at peak drive time, the sun in my eyes and my mind overcome by fear of the unknown.  Everything is fast and unfamiliar and just a little bit scary.  Eyes on the road, I tell myself.  And no radio or cell phone, please.  I need to concentrate.

Maybe this is why I start each day with a meandering walk through a neighborhood I know so well.  At this early-morning hour, my path is virtually absent of other  humans, and I happily roll down my proverbial window, letting in the fresh air and the monk-like whirr of cricket song.  These walks are the travels that sustain me, the ones that allow me to face the more-difficult intersections that await me, whether or not I choose to notice them.

The Turn of a Page

With my annual "educator" gig staring me in the face, it makes sense that I've gotten a bit reflective in these waning days of summer.  And, like seemingly every other 21st-century, first-world woman lucky enough to be able to pay her bills and put a little extra aside each month, I am tempted to be critical of the reflection that is staring back at me.

How on earth is it possible, I ask myself, to still consider my summer "a happy success" despite attending my dear friend's funeral just last week? 

Surely, there must be some sort of moral crack running through my core.

Whatever my justification is for this quiet joy that runs through me, I think the greater lie for me would be to say that this has been a bad summer.  Because it hasn't.

Even this past month--a month weighted down by the wrenching evidence of life's circular tendencies--I have come away heartened.  Consider Bev and Janese and Carol and JoAnn and Mark and Mike and Rob and Brenden and Kim and Mary and Kelly and Renee and neighbors too numerous to name. . . .  Frankly, I have spent time with too many good people in otherwise sterile hospital rooms to believe that joy and love can be snuffed out by the writing of that final chapter.

Yesterday, as we left Pioneers Park, Eric and I pulled the car over to check on a soft-shelled turtle hunched motionless in the middle of the road.  Clumps of still-red blood pooling at its side told us why he'd grown so still.    Moments before, we had celebrated the discovery of a fat, very much alive Monarch caterpillar and its red-beetle neighbor hidden underneath a milkweed leaf.

Everywhere there is evidence that life is full and messy, cyclical and miraculous.  Everywhere, there are stories of revolution and renewal.  Of lives filled up and lives spilled out again.

Perhaps the explanation to this contentment that runs through me, then, is that I have been lucky enough to have taken notice of these things, to have moved into and through these moments of joy and aching, to have lived them as fully as I could, eyes and ears and heart wide open.