Friday, August 31st, 2018

In Praise of Summer, As It Goes
(A Cover Lay Down mix)

31419879-looking-up-at-plain-trees-background-with-a-diminishing-perspective

This week was a slammer: first week of school for both myself and the kids, late-night rehearsals for the play I am directing, which opens next weekend; the wife away for days, on retreat as she works towards certification in her late-in-life spiritual calling as a religious educator. With a heat wave in the middle of it, the air cavernous and close. And both children sick, in a house where hurt will always be.

But my classroom is outfitted in new white boards and stocked with a year’s worth of supplies, thanks to the world’s shortest crowdsource campaign at Donors Choose. This morning I came in late after a shorter-than-expected meeting with the smallerchild’s new teachers, and my intervention students were writing, quietly, building confidence as they grappled with their haphazard prompt without me. My AP class is eager and bright, engaged and having fun; the seniors, who I cared for over two years and then thought I had abandoned last Spring, come to visit with respectful grins, seeking their oracle as they look towards college. Last block, the girl who couldn’t stop chattering Monday asked if she could read her work to the class, and the kids settled in, respectful and sure, to see what they could praise, and found more than enough to satisfy us all.

The play is a stunner. My wife is home, and beautiful, and still smarter than me – tonight’s date at the new restaurant in town felt like renewal. The wee one – at thirteen a willowy, slim pale creature – pushes through her hours and days, and comes home babbling joyfully of friends and teachers she loves for the first time in years. The elderchild pushes, too – through a short dose of steroids that took her to the children’s hospital for the first time in almost two months; through the newest and deepest-so-far of loves, a quiet boy who holds our fancy, too, and stayed with us last weekend in Vermont, at summer’s last summerhome, where every year might be our last.

There is pain in our lives: in my student’s struggle to catch up and transcend the urban blight; in the workload and the weariness; in how little we see our spouses and parents, and the distances that yaw between us; in the prone existence my children live in the darkness as each day wanes, curled around their chronic aches. I come home with a voice hoarse and torn, too tired to care for the rest. Eventually, I think, something else, like this space, too, may have to give.

But there are blessings here, too, and pride – and not just for now: these, and a thousand other pieces of this imperfect world, its challenges met, its promises real.

Each night, as the sun sets behind the trees of a still-summer yard, something I cannot see or hear suddenly startles the turkeys and their babies, almost grown and only slightly smaller, that cross our driveway. And they fly into the low trees like my heart: heavy, in its way, yet weightless in another; winged and free, able to lift still from the earth.

And there is music there, of an origin deep in me and all of us: rustling and beautiful; rejuvenating; reassuring; real.

I am not often here, it’s true. But I love you as I love the world. Let us be here together, as the September world starts to spin again.

Category: Metablog, Mixtapes, Teaching 3 comments »

3 Responses to “In Praise of Summer, As It Goes
(A Cover Lay Down mix)”

  1. last year's girl
    September 1st, 2018 at 4:55 pm

    Your words always make me smile J, no matter how rarely we are treated to them. I think of you and your lovely girls often. x
  2. an old man, lookin' at my life and yours
    September 7th, 2018 at 4:20 pm

    much as I treasure the music you post when you do–and I always, always find something new–it is your words which I am always grateful to read and the stories of your family I enjoy so much. We too have two daughters, who because of you I have now long referred to as elderchild and youngerchild, and if we seem in many ways to have been more fortunate–not that any of this is or should be or can be a contest–than you, we are none the richer for it. I delight that you are here when you can be, share what you do, and wish you all everything you wish and want and more.
  3. an old man, lookin' at my life and yours
    December 24th, 2018 at 1:56 pm

    hopin’ all ya’ll are well. Never doubt your thought of and appreciated, never more than at the holidays, but all the other days too. Best wishes for the new year.

Leave a Reply



↑ Back to top