This coming week, it will mark the first time I’m not returning to school, as a teacher or student, since my kindergarten days in 1984. Forty years of school; forty years of first days, backpacks, shoes, clothes, that smell. Late summers in my childhood included trips to Kmart, Bradlees, Caldor, all stores vanished from here over time with others replacing them.
Honestly, it’s truly strange and hard to describe. When the yellow bus rides away with my amazing kids, I won’t be going with them. 1984. Wow.
For comfort, I will return home to my garden, birds, flowers, and trees. The brook runs now after torrents of rain; we are blessed with safety, though many nearby were not, and we send love and light as they pick up the pieces.
Overall, what I feel and hear is the quiet. Birds call now and then (and thanks to the cool Merlin app my daughter installed on my first ever smartphone, I know what they are). I wander and wonder among the tall grass filled with clover, the flower garden with blooming past, and I reflect on the coming cooler days which have hinted at us already. I don’t mind one bit.
What I realize on the quieter walks is how what I cared for, the weeded beds, the pruned roses, the clipping and deadheading, formed with beauty and strength, creating such lovely spaces to sit in and be still. What I also understand now is how beautiful things grow in quiet places, too, unfettered and wild, like our pumpkins.
For the first time ever as a gardener since my childhood, I grew real pumpkins. In the past, graced by completely random and unplanned mini-pumpkins, I now marvel at the deliberate planting and subsequent growth of these wondrous Rouge Vif d’Etampes! These Cinderella pumpkins are heirlooms from the southern region of Paris, Entampes, and grow bright red (as much as pumpkins will). This plant, brought home from my children from their school’s phenomenal FFA chapter, surprised us beyond measure. I had asked for a simple pumpkin plant, but what I received was so much more.
Though two pumpkins grow, it’s not the number I care about, but how much they grew when I stopped fretting over the plant. Earlier in the summer, the leaves turned a bit yellow, making me nervous, but after some reading and patience, I kept myself back from bothering it. What wonders have now bloomed.
The same lesson I found with our old peach tree, the one in our field that has been “dying” since we moved here ten years ago, yet she totally had other plans this spring and summer. With one strong main branch and a couple of others, over sixty peaches brighten in the sun everyday. The secret? Hugs and love, that’s all. I tell her how much I marvel at her strength; I held her after a storm as the wind, nature’s hair dryer, swept through the field, and she swayed beautifully without a care. She just swayed and went with it.
As a witness, and as I increase my moments of solitude both voluntarily and without choice as my children return to school, I think of my beloved Thoreau. I think about how he encouraged us to wander. That being alone in nature certainly heals in ways unimaginable, and that when you discover yourself in those places, there’s no turning back. You are not the same.
When I announced my retirement to students back in January, it was after our unit on Transcendentalism. We read pieces of Walden, and I had students draw a boat to visualize all the parts. Then, we read one of my favorite portions: “I do not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.”
Students imagined what the idea of rising up felt like, looking at the world in a fresh way, and we talked about what keeps us in the cabin, what obligations hold us there: family, societal pressure, sense of guilt, etc. One student reflected on my own journey while I struggled with emotions about leaving the classroom, and he said something so comforting and wise.
“Ms. Flan, you’re leaving the cabin passage,” he said and smiled.
What a gift! So now that I have, I can see what goes on in the world, witnessing changes I otherwise miss, and not having to do much or anything at all for those transformations to happen. The pumpkins! The peaches! Growing unfettered, unbothered, no obligations, just there in beauty and light.
Putting myself in the light, in that sunshine of life, was not easy at all. Truth be told, it’s baby turtle steps, but they are steps nonetheless. Sometimes, progress happens when you are not moving at all. It happens inside, and this brings space into your life you did not have before.
Stillness, love, light, and when the moment is right, baby turtle steps.
Those steps I take next week along my driveway, after my children leave for another year of experiences and learning, I trust they are taken care of by the most wonderful people. I will continue to trust this journey I am on now without school, without teaching.
I look to the beauty all around me, growing despite seeming still, and I’m comforted. I will allow my home to wrap its arms around me while I sit at my window, listening to birds, writing for people who have embraced me in ways unexpected. Writing, finally I can say, I am writing.
I am grateful for being on the deck of the world, even if that world is quiet. What goodness lies there.
Love and light,
Shennen ~ Writer 🙂
