I Am Stuck on Bandaids, . . .

My school-desk drawer.

Back in my journalism days, you could easily determine my state of mind by how many bandaids were on my fingers.  During weeks when both Yearbook and Newspaper had deadlines, invariably, both thumbs were swaddled in beige Johnson & Johnson blankets.  I'm not a thumb sucker so much as I am a thumb fiddler, and deadlines equal stress equal fiddling.

But it's been 2 1/2 years since my last journalism deadline.  Surely, I've broken up with Bandaids by now.

. . . . .yeah, no.  

The past month, especially, has been hard on my thumbs, but I'm too ashamed to cover both at the same time anymore. Instead, I'm more likely to tuck one of the wounded into a pant pocket or behind a book and hope that no one notices.

Boy, would I love to be able to not notice some things right now.

But how does a public-school employee block out yet another school shooting followed by inane suggestions that, in addition to packing my lunch each day, I should also start packing a gun?  How do I ignore legislative bills that underfund public schools while pampering tiny, private ones, and legislators who propose to politicize school boards? And what is there to say about a dunderheaded governor who invites the NRA to convene in our state, just days after 17 people died from a gun in the hands of a broken, white boy?

I feel like Peter, Paul, AND Mary, but:  Where have all the sane people gone?  

Leave it to science and nature to soothe my savage soul. . . .

A faint radio signal reached the earth recently.  Turns out, a cosmic FM station was playing an oldie that all the scientists had been hungry to hear.  And by "oldie" I mean 13.6 billion years old. 

I don't even begin to claim to understand the idea that some things can be heard as a way of being seen, but, still, I am blown away that scientists have just heard the first whisperings of the very first stars.

Equally mind boggling is the realization that, after the Big Bang, it took millions and millions of years for those first stars to form.  There are times when I am certain that a million years have passed since Trump became president, but this latest astronomical news reminds me I am wrong.  And that I have no patience whatsoever.

If millions of years really did pass between the Big Bang and the formation of the first stars, the educator in me asks what there is to learn in this lesson.

I think the most important lesson is that, cosmologically, at least, this past year has been but a speck, if even that.  So I should be willing to hunker down, do the hard work of living, and trust that my work will pay off.  Eventually.

And still I wonder.  In the midst of all this large time, is it strange to say that I am comforted by my insignificance, relieved that my time is but a tiny wisp in the grand scheme of things?

Over and over and over again, I find my balance by turning to the larger world.  This time, though,  my healing comes from a salve that is much older than this very earth that I walk upon.  Its source lives in a whisper that waited millions of years to find its voice.

I say enough with the Bandaids.  Instead, I will hold my mucked-up hands skyward, trusting that, in time, the healing will come.