MindSpinner

The smell of the boys’ locker room -
pungent sweat soured -
comes as no mystery when you stand with the players
at the edge of the football field
your camera in hand
in case a play stampedes close enough
for the chance of a good shot.

You stand only as high as these boys’ chests,
and you rather hope they notice you are there
when excitement takes them.
They are rapt, they are wrought with
alternate agonies and ecstasies,
and they are dripping.
Behind you, the noise of the crowd
and the approximate music of the pep band
crescendos, subsides and crescendos again.
Coaches’ barks and bellows
sound across the field
like cannons in the 1812 Overture.

Above the glaring lights
and the sober scoreboard,
in the velvet night,
the moon hangs still - a shimmering,
cratered pearl, like a pendant.
And as you walk outside the yellow fence
to the far side of the field,
straw-colored September grass sweeps
round the shoulder of the hill like a shawl
and falls alluringly away
toward the woods under the moon,
into the sound of crickets.

1) I checked the beans yesterday and have a bucketful, so I’m pulling out the canner. I have enough tomatoes to make a small batch of sauce, too. I am happiest in the garden and least happy bumping about by myself in the house, ordering aimlessness with a to-do list. Today, however, it is steamy hot out. I’ll save the outdoors for evening.

2) I had thought that cats were loners of the animal world, that they preferred their own territory. Certainly Bobby, our five-year-old cat, has never liked other cats; he tolerates dogs better because he is more accustomed to them. Presented with a neighbor’s Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy (a creature bred for lion hunting), he will chase it around in the spirit of fun. Presented with a new cat, he will hiss and spit. And so he did at first with the orange kitten who has come to stay. Orange Stripey Dude, for his part, unabashedly expected to be loved and played with and would have no demurring. So now they play, they bathe each other with their tongues, and they often curl up together for a nap. So much for cats being solitary creatures.

3) The new academic year planners do me good. They have “November 2008″ printed right in front of me on physical pages, promising that the next presidential election really will come, and George Bush really will have to leave office.

4) My fifth period sophomore class of about 25 students has at least one precocious student who performs at college level, three who read at fourth grade level and one who reads at first grade level. One expects a range of abilities, but this mix is unusually challenging.

The marathon is winding down: graduation was last night. In a couple of hours, another teacher and I go to return borrowed flowers to a local nursery. One more set of exams must be graded, and I’ll be roping in a few students who need to return to school to complete required work before they can receive credit for English 10. (It isn’t over on the last day of school; it’s over when students successfully complete a course.)

Twenty-nine seniors graduated last night, not hundreds. A number of them had attended school in the same building together since kindergarten. Their fourth grade teacher and their preschool teacher as well as their high school teachers were there to hug them goodbye and wish them well. In how many places does that still happen?

Miracle Girl was quite well enough to board a dinner cruise yacht for prom two weeks ago, to dance with her long-time beau, and to walk across the stage to receive her diploma and awards. She speaks softly and somewhat slowly, but she’s gradually recovering her short-term memory, and she’s able to share her thoughts herself now on the blog her family began to update everyone about her condition. She’s just beautiful, and the determination that served her so well before her accident continues to ensure that she will defy odds and continue all her life to inspire us all.

No one enjoyed graduation more than Exchange Student, a young woman who came to us last fall from Denmark with an endearing accent and smile as natural as sunshine and daisies. She’s determined to import pep rallies, proms, awards for academic achievement, and graduation rituals complete with caps, gowns, and honor cords back into her own country. Her effervescent joy after the ceremony was more than payment enough for all the behind-the-scenes work that a graduation entails. She says that now her little sister wants to come to us when she’s a senior, “So you will have another me. She is just like me, only she is skinny.”

The Class of 2007 is really 30 and not just 29, but one sat apart in the stands. Personal circumstances sidelined him last fall first as a homebound student and then a home school student finishing his graduation requirements online. He’ll be done early next week, having learned difficult lessons about the potential price of procrastination, and his diploma is waiting for him, already signed. He came to see his fellows graduate last night and to applaud them, despite the sharp disappointment of not being able to walk across the stage in his blue cap and gown.

The community where I teach is a village that raises its children. Sometimes, when a family falls down at that job, the school is the family that makes all the difference. That doesn’t always work, of course - a student has to be receptive. But we work to make it true. Teachers watch these young people grow up over years (though I’ve been here only two), and sometimes we even watch them grow up in a day.

I am quite finished with school.

Alas, school is not finished with me.  I should be grading papers now, should have been grading them for the past three or four hours, will grade them sometime - perhaps - at gunpoint.  If you’d like to be helpful, you may lock me in a dark dungeon with a single candle, no garden, and no Internet access, and tell me I can’t come out until the entire stack is conscientiously marked.
I’ve puttered in the garden more often than in the house or at the computer this May.  The results are modest but measurable - six raised vegetable garden beds planted, two left to go, a smattering of vegetables slipped in among flowers and herbs in the kitchen garden, a bean support built today of bamboo and twine.

Though it is green, colorful, and alive, the garden is eerily quiet. Wild honeybees are hardly to be found this year. They are not plundering the blackberry blossoms, where the air should vibrate with their buzzing. They do not cling to slender stems of purple lavender.  As closely as I scan the white clover in the front yard, I can find only two.  I’m relieved to see any at all.  The late frost may have taken the honeybees, or the deep cold of February, or Colony Collapse Disorder, whatever that actually is.  Their work among the flowers is left to others - the tiny insects, the occasional bumblebee or wasp.  I wonder how long the population will take to recover, if it does, and what could be done to help.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must light a candle and make my way down to the dungeon.  If I’m not out by morning, please send a cup of water and a crust of bread, and tell me to hurry up because it’s going to be a lovely day ;->.

I wish I could update my last post by writing that our miracle girl is awake. She’s not, though doctors have talked as if she can make a full but lengthy recovery. She’s still only minimally aware at this point (can raise her arm a little when the doctor tells her to), but is expected to wake up at some point, be that tomorrow or six months from now. She will likely have to relearn some things. She’s weathering an infection today, and her heart rate is up. Back at school, her classmates are fashioning cards out of posterboard and collecting money to help with expenses. Prayers continue.