Dispatch

My birthday today, and I write from the garden where I came to weed and water thoroughly before literally heading for the hills for a couple of days. (We're taking the older nephews to a ranch in the Blue Ridge for some cabin-camping and horseback riding.) A dead robin in the flower bed was a sad start to the morning, but the weather is glorious and a goldfinch perching prettily on one of the tomato cages was somewhat of an antidote to that gloom.

The birds like the water, and now there's a pair of finches hopping and playing in the sprinkler spray. They glow in the sunlight, and I choose them as the heralds of my next year.

Lucky

Yesterday I noticed a couple of wasps flying around my Adirondack chair. The weather here has been HOT and the end of the school year hectic, so I haven't spent much time in that spot. These wasps seemed a little too familiar with one of my favorite seats: an investigation was definitely in order. Having no pesticide handy, I grabbed a bottle of kitchen cleaner and set the nozzle to stream, then I used the sliding screen door for protection, took aim, and drenched those vespidae in that ammonia-based concoction. (Yes, I felt a twinge of guilt.)

Off they flew, presumably to nurse their toxic exposure, and I tipped my chair back to reveal a small but promising start to a paper wasp's nest. There were six cells, and one of them already contained eggs. I scraped it off and then sprayed the underside with insect repellent. The wasps returned a little while later, and perhaps I anthropomorphize, but rather than being as mad as the hornets they were, they seemed confused and upset by the loss of their fledgling colony. I sighed, but humans and wasps cannot co-habitate, as charming as we both might be. Eventually they flew away and did not come back.

I considered how fortunate I was. An evening or two later, a drop in the humidity, a lull in the chaos, I could have unknowingly plopped myself right on top of a wasp's nest. Even discovering it a few days down the line would have made it much harder to take care of. Of course the best case scenario would have been no nest at all, but then I wouldn't have known how lucky I was.

Greed

What is it about money? We have out of town visitors, and so we got tickets for the Bureau of Engraving tour. As our assigned-time group of thirty or so walked through the facility where half of our nation's paper currency is printed, the avarice was palpable. In fact, I wish I had ten bucks for every time someone said Do they give free samples? because then? I'd be rich!

Reciprocity

I had such vivid dreams last night that I woke a little disoriented. They were the kind that make you wonder, sort of like Karen Blixen, if they could possibly be one-sided.

Here is one of my favorite passages from Out of Africa:

If I know a song of Africa-- I thought,-- of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel on the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me?

Blockbuster

Nearly seven months ago I wrote about how the trailer for Toy Story 3 brought me to tears. Today the preview delivered it on its promise to make me cry: I sat in the same seat in the same theater and wept through the whole dang movie-- boo hooed at how Andy is no longer an imaginative little boy, at the toys' moving response to mortal danger, at a final sacrifice for the good of those you love-- aye yi yi, the movie was devastating!

Was my weepy response genuine emotion? Could it have been stress or hormones? Take your pick, but in any regard, I vigorously scrubbed the tear stains from my cheeks as the lights came up. Maybe it was just the Gipsy Kings' rousing rendition of Yo Soy Tu Amigo Fiel.

Maybe not.

Effulgence

Summer vacation has come, as it does every year. Never one to relish transitions, my initial reaction is that of a teacher without a class: What meaning is there in that? I wonder.

Oh, I'll adjust. Soon, I'll be a gardener with a garden, a hiker on a trail, a reader with a book. Everything will find its equilibrium, and everything will shine.

Unexpected

Yesterday I told my students that we would spend most of our last day in homeroom groups. "Will we have cake?" my homeroom wanted to know, but I told them that we had no June birthdays. They were disappointed until someone said, "Hey, isn't your birthday next week?" I nodded. "Will you bring a cake for yourself?" he asked hopefully. I frowned and said no, but they were welcome to bring anything they liked to celebrate. In the general lack of enthusiasm that followed, we dropped the subject and moved on to when they would get their yearbooks.

My birthday was the last thing on my mind this morning in the mayhem of a last day with a few key staff absences. Running around trying to get several things settled at once, my patience was wearing thin when the same student I wrote about in my last two posts came running in out of breath and drenched in sweat. Chronically tardy, here he was-- late for the last day of school. I sighed with a little exasperation as he burst through the door. "Did I make it?" he gasped.

"You're fine," I told him, realizing that another unexcused tardy more or less was inconsequential. "C'mon in."

"I missed my bus!" he huffed. I made a sympathetic face.  He held out a plastic bag. "I missed my bus because I ran to the grocery store to get this, and when I got back to the stop the bus was gone, so I had to run all the way to school with my skateboard. Here!" he offered me the bag. There was a smashed up apple pie inside. "It's for your birthday."

Wow. I did not see that one coming.