Sunday subtleties
Sunday used to be a day of melancholy. Perhaps it still is.
There was the euphoria that waned as the weekend did the same. The nervous flutter of anticipation about the recommencing social networks, activated in person, with the start of a school day.
When I became a teacher, the pleasurable flutter was replaced by a knot of cold, angry dread, a precipitate fallen from the ethereal suspension of the interstitial Saturday, a day of rest, of freedom, of boredom. Or peace? Perhaps not that.
I hear a voice from below.
"Mama, when are we going to buy my school supplies?"
Ah yes, the sound of the season.
And then, of course, there is the disconnect. She is starting her fall, and my summer continues, albeit tenuously, as I teach an intensive summer class to a group far smaller than is custom, and far more eager than even I could have hoped. I don't mind. I am learning to embrace this limbo, the eternal limbo of my existence.
I take a deep breath. When my summer ends, it will signal the beginning of the final stretch. I envision horse necks, pulling, shiny with sweat, racing, racing into nothingness... a deep fog, a dash from fear or simply habit. And yet, there, too, shall I go.
So we will buy sweet smelling erasers, pencils with bright colors to assuage the glitter-seeking magpie that I have raised. She astounds me every day. I don't mind the changes, I tell myself. I don't mind the uncertainty. There is still a mooring of sorts. Her brown eyes shine, and her incessant chatter cuts across my thoughts like a knife. I will grade compositions, and launder the linens that have been soiled in the course of the week. I will be grateful that my child's fever spiked only for the emotional duress of her grandmother leaving. I will think fondly of the hours of sunshine that my mother and I shared, in the Santa Ynez valley, by ourselves, like all those years ago, racing across the Iberian peninsula. The solitary bull against the sea of golden grass. The endless blue of possibility.
Such innocuous choices we make. And yet, they can change the course of a lifetime. Simple choices, that can shatter the illusion of stability in which we engulf ourselves, or that can explode with unexpected emotion, elation, music and joy. Guitar strings plucking at chords that our hearts had forgotten, or buried, or denied. Every day that we get up, and face the universe. Every day that is borrowed, or snatched from the abismal jaws of meaningless. And so it goes.
There was the euphoria that waned as the weekend did the same. The nervous flutter of anticipation about the recommencing social networks, activated in person, with the start of a school day.
When I became a teacher, the pleasurable flutter was replaced by a knot of cold, angry dread, a precipitate fallen from the ethereal suspension of the interstitial Saturday, a day of rest, of freedom, of boredom. Or peace? Perhaps not that.
I hear a voice from below.
"Mama, when are we going to buy my school supplies?"
Ah yes, the sound of the season.
And then, of course, there is the disconnect. She is starting her fall, and my summer continues, albeit tenuously, as I teach an intensive summer class to a group far smaller than is custom, and far more eager than even I could have hoped. I don't mind. I am learning to embrace this limbo, the eternal limbo of my existence.
I take a deep breath. When my summer ends, it will signal the beginning of the final stretch. I envision horse necks, pulling, shiny with sweat, racing, racing into nothingness... a deep fog, a dash from fear or simply habit. And yet, there, too, shall I go.
So we will buy sweet smelling erasers, pencils with bright colors to assuage the glitter-seeking magpie that I have raised. She astounds me every day. I don't mind the changes, I tell myself. I don't mind the uncertainty. There is still a mooring of sorts. Her brown eyes shine, and her incessant chatter cuts across my thoughts like a knife. I will grade compositions, and launder the linens that have been soiled in the course of the week. I will be grateful that my child's fever spiked only for the emotional duress of her grandmother leaving. I will think fondly of the hours of sunshine that my mother and I shared, in the Santa Ynez valley, by ourselves, like all those years ago, racing across the Iberian peninsula. The solitary bull against the sea of golden grass. The endless blue of possibility.
Such innocuous choices we make. And yet, they can change the course of a lifetime. Simple choices, that can shatter the illusion of stability in which we engulf ourselves, or that can explode with unexpected emotion, elation, music and joy. Guitar strings plucking at chords that our hearts had forgotten, or buried, or denied. Every day that we get up, and face the universe. Every day that is borrowed, or snatched from the abismal jaws of meaningless. And so it goes.
posted by ilana at 10:30 a.m.
1 Comments:
It is a funny impasse this toing and froing between summer and autumn, isn't it?
Great post.
Greetings from London.
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