It's four in the morning and I'm thinking of September.
Of all the Septembers I've begun new chapters in new places, often alone.
Is it the "forever a student" consciousness that teachers carry with them their whole lives?
Or is it a New England trait? (The leaves about to turn colors of fire.) The wind, smoky and chilled, hinting at what's to come? What IS to come?
I'm praying someone will win the lottery and leave their job in the English department and the newly appointed Principal will "get" that I'm more than just "a substitute teacher" and I will be given a full-time position in my old school--finally getting my parents off my back as their "failure child"--finally giving something back to this ghost-town that is concrete and markedly from me. (I will never be their most famous inhabitant--nor their most touted citizen--but I may be remembered for something other than slinking back with my tail between my legs and eyes downcast and beaten. ) Meantime, I've been swimming in my successful sister's pool. Like a chlorinated otter far from the sea; swimming blue laps on my back; able to float for hours--could even devour a clam or two; my furry places slick and wet, in their own element; it's a kind of moving meditation. Clouds above me; gentle woodsy sounds from the forest behind the house; the scent of mown lawns and crab apple trees just dropping their fruit.
Only the occasional gunshots from down the road mar these hours.
(This like every neighborhood I've lived in all my adult life...on either coast...now it's the "gun club", in town, a mile or so through the woods; behind the house. Target shooting. Testosterone hobby. Pop pop pop. Even the birds are used to it, though. Just like in L.A....)
My siblings are in Maine, at the family summer rental, right on the coast. I'm with the dog, who is not fond of the pool. Instead, she watches me from the safety of the deck, sunning herself and wanting her "mother" to come home from Maine. I'm all she's got, for now. So, she "guards" me, half-asleep, minding more the grasshoppers flitting by her head than the distant gunfire.
I think of Egypt, erupting, as I do my laps.
I think of the land of swimming pools I left, out West. Of friends from the desert to the valley, immersed in aquamarine: some swimming like Greg Louganis (and hitting on their swim teachers); others barely adding chemicals to their own pools in this time of mass recession...How many midnight trysts bouncing from hot tub to cool pools, over the years? How many summer evenings looking up at the flashing stars, floating on my back in the night, amazed that I was somewhere this miracle could occur?
Now, my successful sisters have a house and a large garden and lawns to trim and a koi pond and each a two car garage. (One also has moved her boyfriend inside.) The other has the dog. They share the pool. With all of us.
I am the only one who floats like a sea otter far from her kelp.
Listening to gunshots in the woods.
Praying for Egypt.
Missing my friends
at the end
of
summer.
Of all the Septembers I've begun new chapters in new places, often alone.
Is it the "forever a student" consciousness that teachers carry with them their whole lives?
Or is it a New England trait? (The leaves about to turn colors of fire.) The wind, smoky and chilled, hinting at what's to come? What IS to come?
I'm praying someone will win the lottery and leave their job in the English department and the newly appointed Principal will "get" that I'm more than just "a substitute teacher" and I will be given a full-time position in my old school--finally getting my parents off my back as their "failure child"--finally giving something back to this ghost-town that is concrete and markedly from me. (I will never be their most famous inhabitant--nor their most touted citizen--but I may be remembered for something other than slinking back with my tail between my legs and eyes downcast and beaten. ) Meantime, I've been swimming in my successful sister's pool. Like a chlorinated otter far from the sea; swimming blue laps on my back; able to float for hours--could even devour a clam or two; my furry places slick and wet, in their own element; it's a kind of moving meditation. Clouds above me; gentle woodsy sounds from the forest behind the house; the scent of mown lawns and crab apple trees just dropping their fruit.
Only the occasional gunshots from down the road mar these hours.
(This like every neighborhood I've lived in all my adult life...on either coast...now it's the "gun club", in town, a mile or so through the woods; behind the house. Target shooting. Testosterone hobby. Pop pop pop. Even the birds are used to it, though. Just like in L.A....)
My siblings are in Maine, at the family summer rental, right on the coast. I'm with the dog, who is not fond of the pool. Instead, she watches me from the safety of the deck, sunning herself and wanting her "mother" to come home from Maine. I'm all she's got, for now. So, she "guards" me, half-asleep, minding more the grasshoppers flitting by her head than the distant gunfire.
I think of Egypt, erupting, as I do my laps.
I think of the land of swimming pools I left, out West. Of friends from the desert to the valley, immersed in aquamarine: some swimming like Greg Louganis (and hitting on their swim teachers); others barely adding chemicals to their own pools in this time of mass recession...How many midnight trysts bouncing from hot tub to cool pools, over the years? How many summer evenings looking up at the flashing stars, floating on my back in the night, amazed that I was somewhere this miracle could occur?
Now, my successful sisters have a house and a large garden and lawns to trim and a koi pond and each a two car garage. (One also has moved her boyfriend inside.) The other has the dog. They share the pool. With all of us.
I am the only one who floats like a sea otter far from her kelp.
Listening to gunshots in the woods.
Praying for Egypt.
Missing my friends
at the end
of
summer.
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