Labor Day Weekend. Here we are. This is September: it is hot, but temperatures that would leave me limp and miserable in July are bearable now, in this transition between summer and fall. And right now, where I live, I am safe from both hurricanes and fires. Watching the updates of evacuations in Montana is heartbreaking. This afternoon I took my son to a local splash park and watched him play with so many other neighborhood kids, and the sunshine was delicious, and I love these days in which I watch my children just fully immerse themselves in summer childhood: sunscreen, water, new friends made in the moment. And yet, I'm praying for an end to the days of sunshine and heat, and praying for rain. The photographs of Sperry Chalet burning in Glacier Park bring literal tears to my eyes. The places we spent some of our very best days this summer are closed off, evacuated, burning. Please, God, send all the rain to Montana. Bring an early snow. Let my home state breathe again.
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Here in my other home, the home of my choosing rather than the home of my birth, shadows slide across the sidewalk, long at dinnertime. The sun begins its business of setting early enough to cool the evening air, no matter how hot the afternoon sun. Yesterday morning I rose hours before dawn to drive my parents to the airport, and the dark of four o'clock had a pleasant chill; when I slipped back into bed at five-thirty, I pressed my cold feet against my warm husband and thought, blearily, that soon I will wrap a blanket around my body to ward off the night's chill. And I found pleasure in that thought before I drifted back to sleep.
What I'm trying to say is that I'm ready for September and everything it brings with it. The world keeps turning. Sometimes this feels like an atrocity and sometimes it feels like a comfort.
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Like every teacher, each June I am desperate for summer. But every August, I am ready to go back. This year, I was ready early; the morning after we flew in from our last trip of the summer, I was back at work. That was weeks ago. I've been at school or at trainings every day since then, with the exception of Friday when I stayed home to paint the hallway bathroom. My children have logged a lot of hours at school with me as we set up my classroom, and they've spent many hours with their babysitter as well while I've been at trainings and professional development and a high-energy union meeting that made me immensely proud to teach exactly where I do. And while some of the early mornings have felt a little rough after the freedom to not be perfectly put together for awhile, the last few weeks have felt good. I couldn't wait to get back into my classroom. The kids helped me scrub the desks, move them together, and assemble supply boxes for each table group. They watched movies on their little DVD player in the computer lab while I sat at my desk and mapped out new curriculum. We watched the solar eclipse outside the library during senior registration, and there was no place I'd rather have been; I watched unfamiliar shadows fall across a deeply familiar place, felt the temperature drop, and soaked in the delighted reactions of my own children and the teenagers sharing eclipse glasses. I settled into this deep, late-summer contentedness in that room. Last week I found myself still there at nearly 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, and I'd settled into such a comfortable groove of productivity in my quiet space that I was reluctant to leave.
It was a good summer, but it was too full; all summer I didn't have two consecutive weekends at home, and I'm so ready to settle back into my routine, my own space. I'm ready to sleep in my own bed and have some measure of control of what I eat, where I go, when I want to go somewhere, what I drive. I already feel protective of next summer. I want the slower weeks, the languid afternoons. I want my kids to cope with boredom, and I don't want to spend each week planning the next trip. I hate for this to sound like a complaint, because it's such a privileged problem to have, and each trip was objectively good, but by the time we returned home in mid-August I was so desperately grateful to just be home. Our cozy house, our backyard. Our summer traditions: swimming in Lake Washington at Madison Beach and eating pizza afterwards, eating lunch outside every day, spending mornings at the playground and afternoons at the splash park, grilling dinner outside.
This weekend I'm trying to balance the last lovely moments of true summer with steady productivity, which keeps my anxiety at bay. Somewhat. Part of it is the normal anticipation of school, the return of the back-to-school dreams, and the frantic hope that my children will be happy and okay in their new classes. My daughter starts middle school, and my son is alone at the elementary school now. Three of us in three different schools will take a little juggling, and I'm eager to find our groove.
This morning I read something I wrote in a journal six years ago, when my daughter was starting kindergarten and I was getting ready to teach new classes. I could have written nearly the same thing today. That soothed me a little.
Facebook also reminds me that three years ago, instead of settling in for an early bedtime before the first day with my students, we tossed toothbrushes and a stuffed puppy in a backpack and rushed our little son to Mary Bridge Children's, where we spent a few anxious days.
Every place my mind lands brings a different sort of perspective: the wider world, and our closer one. Hurricanes, fires. Anxious nights in the ER and the way the world can narrow to the confines of the walls of a hospital room.
The world churns on, and much about the churning world feeds my anxiety, too. I'm anxious about the fact that the entire western half of my home state is on fire and this goes largely overlooked. I'm anxious for my students this year and what Trump's horror of a presidency continues to mean for them. I'm anxious over any number of things I can't control. Maybe this is why I was so eager to return to school this year; I know it's dangerous to focus too much on outcomes when we work so hard against forces we can't control. We might not be able to change the big picture, and certainly not by ourselves, but I believe strongly in the power of doing what we can, where we are. I don't know how else I can continue just breathing in and out.
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