Time for my annual rant about school starting before Labor Day.
It's just wrong. Resorts suffer, from a lack of patrons and a lack of staff. All those summertime jobs - life guard, camp counselor, ice cream man, boardwalk shill - peak in the dog days of August. the song does say See you in September, not August.
That feels especially true to me this year. For the first time in a long time, I was once again tethered to a school calendar. Garden Club met every Wednesday; when I wasn't there, the kids noticed. I reveled in those totally without entanglement mid-week respites all through the summer.... the summer that I think should still be going on.
Not that I'm sad to open up the garden once again. Not at all. It has nothing to do with future fun. It has everything to do with prolonging my current state.
Since I was a little girl, I've loved hot August afternoons, the ones with no plans, where a walk down the street settles my soul. The day has to be really hot, with no breeze, filled with the stillness that makes every breath taste deliciously of laziness and languor and lollygagging. There's got to be no place to go and nothing to do, no one waiting for me at either end of the journey.
It's pure bliss. It's a self-contained moment, usually alone, though there were some memorable ones when the Cuters were very young. No chattering, no headphones, no sounds except the city sounds, or the tide along Richardson Bay, or the Mourning Doves cooing from the top of the saguaros.
I can just be.
I'm not ready for it to end.
I have a deal with Columbia, I go back the week of Labor Day. That gives the school, students, and teachers, a chance to settle in before I come and stir up things. The teachers know their kids better and routines have been established. Of course, once you start, yes, you have to be there every week. Even the teachers notice that I am there on a consistent basis.
ReplyDeleteI try not to go into the classrooms for a while, for all the reasons you state. But I'm there on the first day of school, in the lobby as parents show up to register their kids (where were they all summer?!??!?!) and kindergarteners wear their scared faces. My stickers make them smile. I'll check the garden and drop off sweet treats during the planning week (tomorrow, actually) and wander the playground until the kindergarden teachers tell me I'm welcome.
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