The Wikiness

Ah, those two weeks in late July or early August, mesmerized by steady waves on the southeast shore of Lake Michigan, the soft cry of hovering gulls, clouds gently morphing and moving across blue skies by sweet summer winds. Precious downtime. Time for me and my family to just be. 

And then, “When do you go back?”

Groan. 

“Back to school.” As recently as a few years ago, those three words meant a painful series of mental maneuvers that wrenched me from relaxed private citizenhood and threw me back into service as perfect public servant. I’d need to put away my books, guitar, and oil paints, wrap up all the loose ends of my private life, and re-enter school with a smile and bottomless empathy and energy for the least of society’s brothers and sisters, all in the space of about a week.

Weary was I, climbing stairs laden with supplies to my classroom before students arrived. A round of planning meetings with colleagues, “kick-off” events under admin, and commiserating with peers over lost freedoms ensued. 

“Did you get away?” “How was Wisconsin?” “I’m sorry to hear about your mother.”

Within a week, I had shaken off all natural grace and steeled myself again into highly-effective teacher, a fast-paced, caffeine-fueled modality I’d retain from mid-August all the way to the following July (since my money situation made summer school a must, and it followed hard on the regular calendar’s last day).

“Back to school” usually meant back to a chain-gang of incessant demands and impossible directives.

Now, by contrast, I’m finding myself loving this, my third Back to School season when I don’t have to answer the call. And though I hear desperate pleas to get people like me back to the classroom, and thatI Illinois is 7,000 teachers short staffed, I calmly say, “no.” I empathize with today’s teachers. I wish them well. 

The truth is, I still consider myself an educator, but now, my only student is myself, and the learning is extremely pleasant.

In my 62nd year, I’ve gone back to childish interests, the ones that grew organically out of me when I was unencumbered by parenting or employment.  I lead a kind of vegetative life now, sinking my roots deep into soils that I choose for nourishment, and vining my senses toward light that might be obscure to others, but is health itself to me. The goal of this educational project? To develop whatever my talents are as a human to their full.

In the shortening days of August now, my life is flourishing in the garden beds of high-quality sleep, reading, body neutrality, Chicago history and culture, rock and roll, guerilla gardening, grandfathering, healthy diets, painting a gallery of prominent Americans, and cultivating a deeper relationship with myself. My eclectic curriculum energizes and fulfills me, and makes me very, very grateful that I can at last just authentically be, apart from school.