A small mountain remains: some research papers and two days worth of exams. It will take me hours to scale this mountain, but these are hours I can count, a discernible number– so different from the unknown and countless hours of grading I do over the course of the school year.
I have some boxes to check: we get a list at the end of the year– things to do before we go. Clean out cupboards, remove all food. Count and organize your books, wipe down your boards.
The last days have been busy: signing yearbooks, saying farewells, administering exams all week. I had two parties for students at my house, delightful and exhausting in their turn.
Then last night was the senior banquet, and this morning was graduation. I teared up more than once: why are beginnings also always an end? I drove home to remove my party dress and earrings and be a Saturday mom once more.
And there they are again: the leaves all over everything. The trees have put on their party clothes, and the humidity swells the space between them. Yesterday’s thunderstorm has given way, so it seems, to clouds and blue, and Bill already has ribs on the smoker.
It isn’t quite here, but it is Very Nearly Almost. Three more teacher workdays, one small mountain, a faculty meeting or two.
But when I took off my heels this early afternoon, I tied the ankle-bracelet on anyway– the one made of hemp and blue beads, the one Emma brought me from the Carolina shore, the one I will wear all summer.
