that means tomorrow I turn 74.
I have now been home for 9 weeks. My seniors have all finished their work as of last week (with a few struggling a bit beyond that) and I manage to get all except 1 through my course (he can retake it in summer school).
Not having seen them, for many I did not know what they had decided about next year so I asked, and I am now getting emails informing me of college choices, and in some cases prospective majors.
Our graduation will be online, for one hour, on June 5. Some of our more distinguished alumni will make remarks. After that faculty members will fan out and go to student houses to deliver boxes which will have diplomas, awards, even personal letters written by teachers (I will be writing 38 since I teach 138 seniors). I still have a few weeks with my two underclassmen.
I have had occasion to reread some things I wrote, some as much as a decade ago. I have over the past few days spent some time reflecting, as I often try to do as another year of life comes to an end.
What is offered below are a few thoughts/observations coming from that reflection.
My feelings will not be hurt if you go no further. If you do, I am honored by your willingness to do so.
For better or worse I am a teacher. I have a signed contract for the forthcoming school year even as I do not know what form that teaching will take nor do I as yet know my specific load of classes. My primary focus will remain government, and all or almost all of my students will be seniors. Because it will be an election year, I will be approaching the course very differently in order to engage them with what is happening around them, even though perhaps none and at most only a few will be old enough to participate by voting. And yes, I operate upon the assumption that in some form we will have a national election.
As I look back on the past school year, I find as I always do things I wish I had done differently, that I know I could have done better. I connected with most of my students, but not all. I appreciate the kind words and thanks from students and parents, but I am never fully satisfied. Teaching is not an exact science, because we teachers do not control with what the students arrive. It is a collaborative (with them) process. and at least for me the first task is to get to know and understand them well enough to make the adjustments necessary to help them learn. It is always an ongoing process. This year was also a learning experience for me, coming into a school which opened a few months after I was born, and which has a long-established culture which was somewhat new to me. New, but surprisingly not alien. Despite not being Catholic I am very much at home there in a way I have not been since I first retired in 2012, and in some ways even more than at the school from which I retired because of the amount of freedom as a teacher I have. My wife notices the difference in me.
We have been more together with one another over the past 9 weeks than I can ever remember since our honeymoon and a few extended vacations. We are doing very different things during the workday, but we still exchange ideas, do small things for one another.
We are probably more socially isolated than many. My wife has health issues that puts her somewhat at risk. So do I. She has not been out of the house except to walk around the neighborhood, carefully. I do that, but I also do the shopping and all errands. She worries about my getting sick, and that worry can be debilitating. A part of me thinks she is being somewhat silly, but it becomes incumbent upon me to take her concerns seriously. She has come to understand that I do not need to be reminded to be careful- I wipe off everything I bring into the house, I do all the dishes, I take care of getting our elderly cat to the vet 2x/week for treatment.
We have had more time to talk and share than we have had in years — except for those occasional extended vacations. We are both older, we both realize risks, my wife’s father is approaching 90 with health issues and she realizes she may never again go birding with him. She and some siblings and her dad have sessions with one another several times a week, sometimes involving prayer, sometimes just sharing.
I soend a lot of time just being with our elderly (19) cat and just listening to music. I don’t read as much as I thought I would, in part because I had so much to read from (and comment upon to) my students until recently. My one other regular task is filling the bird feeder outside our front door, which also leads to my spending time simply watching regulars come to dine and also to use our bird bath with its dripping water (to keep away mosquitos).
For most of my life I have been an extravert, albeit a shy one — that combination has in the past contributed to a social awkwardness, perhaps one reason I am so comfortable teaching adolescents (I still understand what that is like).
I suspect I am now far more introverted than extraverted. I enjoy having time to just be, to be alone with my thoughts, or to just be with my wife and cat. I miss my students (and I have told them so), but I don’t really miss the ordinary social interactions of regular life.
But this is a political blog, so how does all this fit into that? I have not lost my interest in political matters — after all, it is a major focus of my teaching. I find myself less inclined to engage with the regularity and intensity that I used to display here. I post far less frequently. I do read, I do some engagement in social media. But I am not driven about these matters in the same way as before.
Please do not mistake what I am saying. I still care passionately about many things. But now I am more inclined to ponder more before engaging through writing or speaking.
I know I am on the downward slope of my life. There are things I had hoped to do and places I had hoped to visit that I now know will not be part of my life experience. I can live with that.
I have far less energy since my stroke last November. I have to pace myself. I have to conserve enough energy to engage meaningfully on some matters, but others — even though important — are things I now realize I simply cannot do with integrity, and without that they are not for me worth doing,
When I was very much younger, I was very fond of Brams, of Beethoven… now while enjoy both at times what I want is Bach, at other times the intensity of Mahler. I have not played piano in more than a half decade. I consider getting my baby grand fixed up and seeing what I can still do with these fingers that now get their exercise on a very different kind of keyboard.
I have read some weighty tomes over the years. From time to time I will still engage with that kind of deep prose, of probing analyses.
But now I find myself more and more drawn to poetry.
I will return to that anon,
I have always been an emotional person. My wife says that what it takes my students a while to realize is that for all my intensity and apparent ferocity I am a softy, a marshmellow. I acknowledge that.
I have over the past 9 weeks often found myself weeping. It is not for myself. It is for the suffering and loss. IT is for the generosity and sacrifice. It is for the destruction I see happening to our country,
Poetry. I find myself returning to poems half remembered, rereading them and pondering things I had perhaps never considered.
So let me conclude this meandering by quoting the first four and last five lines of a poem that in its entirety still challenges me, my conceptions, with how I live and think and act. It is poem of brutal honesty which could depress one if one does not take it ALL in,
The poem is William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence
the first four lines are:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
and the last five are:
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
Peace