elizabethlevett

The autumn equinox is here. Already and finally. It was just a week before the equinox in spring when we were all sent home. We were told we might be back in a week – maybe the week after that. Then we found out we wouldn’t be going back at all – not through the spring at least. So we got as organized as we could in the rush to leave school. And the melt down came as it does when something huge and unexpected truly integrates itself in me. When I realized – I wouldn’t be seeing those beautiful, bright children I’ve grown so close to – some I’ve known since they were babies – realized I’d only talk to them on the screen each day, I had a good cry. We spent our time together as productively, as sweetly as we could. We’d send each other pictures of fairy doors and oak trees and write “Once Upon a Time” stories and research reports about sea otters together. And I watched them change. They didn’t get to finish the year really enjoying together the benefits of all they’d learned together as a team. They were now fully in the hands of their parents – kind and hard-working people for whom home schooling had never been intended, had never been planned for. And that was spring.

We watched the stories of sad separation, longing, suffering, and dying. We looked for ways to keep ourselves somehow focused forward even as the world around us seemed suspended in time. Then somehow it was summer. We got to go clear out our classrooms, put things away so we could be ready to come back at the end of summer and start a new year with new children – train them and get to know them – watch them play and grow together. At some point in the summer it became clear that we wouldn’t be going back in August. Another melt down. (“I just want to teach!”)

The summer solstice was a painful time of confusion and noise as more and more we witnessed violence, anger, and grief. Some of us were again being marginalized, mistreated, cut down without justice. Some were inexplicably unmoved, somehow hungry for more hatred, more violence, more baffling cruelty. It was a summer of trying to find peace somehow in a noisy world of rage, rage that had been stoked into flame by anxiety and frustration.

Still, somehow by the middle of August, I felt ready finally to get started teaching again, to go to my classroom alone and stuff bags with things my new students could use at home, books to read, games to play, math and art materials for exploring and creating together. Hours and hours spent hiking or gardening had healed the soul enough. Besides, I couldn’t imagine marching my new little ones into school and admonishing them to stay always six feet apart, keep that mask on, and never ever run to me for comfort when you cry.

And so it is that another equinox is here. Families have lesson plans for week six in their hands with the week’s new sight words, new little books, new writing ideas to try, new stories for read aloud. (Funny, even on screen the most distracted young children become a rapt unity of intense concentration during a story!)

I look at my hands and they look like my mother’s hands – lots of damage from the sun and months of gardening and constantly sanitizing, the nails clipped short because it seems cleaner that way. But there’s a coat of shiny red polish because a friend said shiny things help students focus their attention. Something about this makes me smile – hands ready for hard work, but with an elegant touch all the same.

The beginning of the autumn season means a little less light. It’s already a little darker when I set out for a fast walk in the early morning. I choose the well-lit streets for safety. Fall and winter promise there may be a little more calm in the air, a little more peace, maybe, but still lots of work to be done. Another equinox. I know the word gets its root from “equal,” as the sunlight and darkness are at the closest they are all year to being of equal lengths. Still the word reminds me of “equine,” horse. And so it is that we gallop or canter steadily along. We have our melt downs as we did when we lost a five-foot, one-inch giant named Ruth last week – a woman justice who worked hard, but with an elegant touch. She would say – go on. She would say – do what needs to be done and do it well just as long as you possibly can. Go ahead and melt down as your seasons change, as your light begins to fade. Mourn and then get on with it. And do it with a little bit of shine.