Scene change

I am participating in the
 Slice of Life.  
All participants are writing about one moment, one part of their day, 
on Tuesdays.
Thank you, Two Writing Teachers!

This past summer was slow and emotional, with much loss and love. We had the challenging work of emptying out my parents' things for the very last time and moving treasures by U-haul. We had the painful, hard, deeply loving work of being present for the death of my brother-in-law, from lung disease. We had tender, dear moments with my 90 year old father, in his nursing home, who has trouble communicating with us, yet clearly feels embraced by our presence. In and around the 'hard,' we had sweet time with our granddaughter ('Frog'), now 10 months old, and sprinkles of time lost in good conversations with friends and family, or immersed in reading novels, or writing and journaling, or digging in the garden dirt.

It was a summer,
rich and varied and slow.

Now, scene change: intense time and thought and action, all about school. Two weeks of professional development, new staff, revised procedures, discipline statistics, equity goals, planning lessons, duty schedules, special education details, classroom purchases, collaboration, classroom setup, long days, and, just this week, first days of school, welcoming new preschoolers and families. I am very much on auto-pilot, having done this for so many years now. I am excited and delighted by my new kiddos and families. I look forward to this year of teaching. This year, however, begins like a hastily-wiped whiteboard - with that residue bleeding through of what was before. I am still processing my summer, in the midst of the new.

Weeding

I am participating in the
 Slice of Life.  
All participants are writing about one moment, one part of their day, 
on Tuesdays.
Thank you, Two Writing Teachers!

I'm out front, weeding, underneath the azaleas. My goal is to eradicate every last remnant of a pesty vine I call bindweed or common morning glory...I'm not quite sure of its name, I simply know its nature. It very cleverly blends into the branches of my azaleas and the stalks of my purple coneflower and black eyed susans, winding itself all around these in a type of chokehold, growing and weaving its way to the top. It is what I call a copycat plant, in that you often miss it, if you simply glance at your flowers...it is stealth, with similar leaves, and entangled within and around its host. Beneath the soil, it has a multitude of runners, allowing it to spread out and sidle up and through almost every plant in my garden. Shoots of this vine will climb along a neighboring stalk and then bend towards each other at the top of the plants, interlocking vine and leaves with one another, forming almost a rope 'hat' at the top of the plants. When the weed has escaped my eye just long enough to settle in, it blossoms with a a bright, white flower - as if to jeer, "Ta da! Look at me! You have neglected your garden! Ha ha!"

It does no good to simply peel off the flowering vines from the tops of the plants - though I admit it is highly pleasurable to grab the mass from above and yank. If I want to get rid of the bindweed, I have to get underneath, to where the vine emerges from the ground...I need to find every chute and dig these up by the roots. I find it is best for me to be down low, on my knees, peering up into the branches, watching for chutes that have climbed up from the soil. It is slow and patient work.

Try as I might, I always miss some. I'll finish for the day, put away my tools, go inside and get cleaned up, step back outside with a cup of iced tea, and my eyes are drawn right back to the blemish - AACK! There's another one of those dang weeds! I swear, bindweed regrows within the hour.

I think how this yard work is a metaphor for our world, where vicious weeds like racism and hate and bullying and misogyny and white supremacy pop up and then reach towards one another, becoming intertwined, and, in this way, much stronger. We cannot ignore these, we cannot make superficial or temporary fixes. The only way to eradicate them is to get to the roots, which means we must be caring, determined, and focused in multiple places simultaneously. We must toil. We must get to know one another, to connect, to be good neighbors. We must give lots of love and attention to that which we treasure, and ensure that it is safe and nourished. We must teach our children well. We must realize our work is never, ever done.