Today is one of those days. You know the ones. They go like this:

“OK, class, today we are studying libel. I have prepared a PowerPoint for…

“Ummm, the projector doesn’t seem to be working. No problem. Instead we’ll go back into the computer lab and begin work on an independent study unit. Log in as…

“Six of you can’t log in? I see. No worries, let’s try…”

After struggling to find log-ins and coordinating passwords for the final six, I notice a student, one of the ones whose computer works all too perfectly, watching a booty-shaking, Shorty-gettin’-low rap video.

My voice shoots up an octave.

“Brendan,WeDon’tWatchMusicVideosinClass…andYouOweMe$6…25centsFor EachCussWordThatJustSpewedIntoMyClassroom.”

And it goes up another half-octave more into the screechy “Nightmare Before Christmas” kind of voice…

“You’veAlready FinishedTheUnit? DidyouREALLYReadIt orDidYouJustSkim? AnswerTheQuestions? YouDid? JustSitQuietlyThen.”

Then the bell rings.

Today was that kind of day.

I spent all of seminar just signing students in and out of my class. For an hour and a half, I wished I could have recorded my words so I didn’t have to repeat them.

“I need your pink ‘here’s where I’m heading’ form. While I am completing your Green Card, please make sure you have signed the Student Accountability Clipboard. We’ll need to make sure that the Green Card and the Clipboard agree as to what time you left. Don’t forget to sign back in when you return and give your Green Card back to me. If you are planning to leave the room again, we will need to repeat the entire process. Yes, you can have a paper clip to attach your Green Card to your shirt. Yes, I know it sounds like you are an illegal alien seeking legal work status…”

AndThenItWasLunchTimeAndIReallyJustNeededToGetOutsideOfTheBuilding. IRushedToTheDoorAndTheMostAmazingThingHappened.

Iopenedthedoor,

theairrushedtowardme,

Isteppedoutside

and the sunshine hit my shoulders .

A l l o f a s u d d e n,

I j u s t s l o w e d d o w n .

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With the nearly five inches of drizzly rain punctuated by a few sudden cloudbursts (and, yes, a few tornadoes) that drenched Kansas City in the past few weeks, everything is beautiful here… green and slightly squishy. The mornings dawn as crisp as a Jonathan apple with temperatures in the high 40s. When I get up the moon is still bright, when I escape the building for lunch, it’s bright outside. Downright cheery.

There’s something about fall that I’ve never really appreciated. We’ve just come out of what we always perceive as the relax-in-the-sun, “let’s-go-on-vacation” days of summer. The pool no longer calls to us. I don’t feel pressured to make sure I am having a good time. Fall makes me slow down. Makes me take time to notice the leaves’ slow transition from green to gold to orangey-red. It forces me to notice the changing quality of light as we move from the brilliance of summer to the stark shades of winter. The prairie flowers have dressed the land in autumn’s earthy shades. The garden calls to me, offering the final harvest. The pear tree challenges me to find uses for its fruit. The Ziploc bags of applesauce stacked in the freezer speak of tiny apples too small to peel but too numerous let fall to the ground.

The dark days of January are the ones we see as a time of reinvention and renewal. I have never been good at New Year’s Resolutions. There’s too much on my plate, too much pressure. I’m too tired from celebrating Christmas and the New Year and the likelihood is too great that I will fail. But fall… fall is slower and so much safer. Transition is in the air as we anticipate the beauty of frost-etched windows and a snow-blanketed world, all while clinging to the warmth and lushness of summer. I’m summer lean right now (well, as lean as I’ve been for a while). Rather than work to diet away the excesses of the holidays and the layer of fat I put on in winter (to keep me warm, of course), I will start now just to avoid the whole thing. Rather than wait until the organizational sales of spring cleaning, perhaps now, at the beginning of the school year, is the more appropriate time for me to get my filing system organized, to get those notebooks put together, to throw away the things that clutter my desk and my life. Rather than catching up, I’m choosing to plan ahead.

Isn’t that what autumn, the season of the harvest, is all about? Saving the bounty of this season to tide us over. Capturing summer’s season of growth in a little bag of applesauce. Organizing and planning ahead. Preparing for the busy-ness of that comes with the holidays by taking time to breathe now.

Gotta go. I’ve got a sunset to watch.

One Response to “September slow-down”

1. Jamie Hergott Says:
   September 25th, 2008 at 8:10 am

   I love this.

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