Last First Day of School

Today is my last first day of school. This is the latest the spring semester has ever begun while I've been teaching at Fredonia, and I've been glad to have the extra time to prepare--both academically and emotionally. When I first started teaching at Fredonia in 1988, I taught two sections of ENGL 100 at night as a part-time adjunct. This semester I am again teaching two classes at night as a (retired) part-time adjunct (though this semester I am teaching online instead of on campus). I find myself anticipating this last semester with equal measures of sorrow and relief. 

My decision to retire has not come quickly or easily. Walking away from a job I've loved has been tough. I spent many evenings over the summer sorting through and boxing up the books on my office shelves. I've taken down the pictures on the walls and cleaned out most of the drawers in my desk. I still have the file cabinet to tackle, and I think that will be the hardest job of all since I have files going all the way back to grad school tucked away in there. I can only do a little at a time. I read somewhere once that it's not the sorting and cleaning that takes the time, it's the memories that slow you down, and that has been very true for me. 

I know there are things I will forever miss about my job: the daytime hustle and bustle of Fenton Hall; the casual hallway and doorway conversations with my colleagues; the still of the Fenton Hall in the evening when most people have gone home; my cheerful, cluttered office; and of course, my earnest, hardworking students.

My transition from full-time to no-time has been deliberately slow. When I left my classroom last spring in the middle of March, I didn't know it would be for the last time, and somehow that made things easier. In the fall I taught a full load, but my classes and department meetings were virtual; this too added a layer of detachment from life as I've known it in Fenton Hall for more than 30 years. Now that I'm in the final stages of it all, the next chapter of my life has started to reveal itself bit by bit. 

I've always been an early riser, and that hasn't changed. I like being up while the world is still dark and quiet. I seem to do a lot of my best thinking and writing in those early hours. It's nice not to have to stop writing, working, and dreaming to shower, pack a lunch, and rush off to campus. 

I am finding that I like the slower pace of the rest of the day too. I have time to take long walks and knit and bake bread. I can read books that aren't on my syllabi. I can spend time watching multiple series on different platforms--I'm currently in the midst of The Crown, Cranford, Ted Lasso, Virgin River, and Last Tango in Halifax. 

It's not that I never had time to do any of the above before, but I always felt rushed, frazzled, or slightly guilty about wasting time. Of course, there are also many,  many household chores that have been waiting patiently (albeit dustily and messily) for my time and attention--though to be honest, I haven't expended a whole lot of energy in that direction yet. 

Slowly but surely, my well-worn identity as a college lecturer will be eclipsed by these other roles: writer, knitter, baker, reader, watcher, cleaner, organizer . . . and in an exciting plot twist: grandmother! We found out on Christmas morning that our first grandchild is on the way. He or she will arrive in August--just before a new semester starts without me. I can't imagine a better next chapter than that. 

Mr. Wendell

In 1985 Steve and I were living in New Hampshire. We had jobs but not careers. Steve's parents had come for a visit, and we were talking about the future. It was a stressful, stomach-churning conversation because we were talking about change, about what we were going to do with the rest of our lives. I had more or less decided I wanted to teach high school English, but Steve just wasn't sure what he wanted to do, and that was causing a lot of turmoil all the way around. However, a few months later, we had taken a leap of faith and moved to Fredonia where we were both enrolled education classes. When Ben surprised us a year later, my plans changed gears a bit, but Steve soldiered on. He worked at the college library and did some substitute teaching to make ends meet as he finished his student teaching, got his master's degree, and landed a job at Silver Creek Elementary School. Every school day since the fall of 1988, he's been packing a lunch, grabbing his school bag, and making the drive to Silver Creek. Over the past twenty-nine years, he's had triumphant days, I-can't-do-this-job-for-one-more-minute days, and lots of regular old teaching days. But even on the worst days, he stuck with it, never giving in, never giving up. He made not just a living as a teacher, he made a life for himself and our family, and he's touched the lives of hundreds of students, including this year's valedictorian at Silver Creek. Well, two hours ago Steve left for his last day of teaching; today is his final day with his final class. At morning's end, he'll wave the students off to the busses for the last time. Teachers stay the rest of today and have to report tomorrow as well, but then he'll be done. Forever. Once he catches his breath, I'm counting on him to start staking our claim in the new territory of retirement. But for now, I want to say this: Well done, Mr. Wendell!

Labor Day and Back-to-School Muffins

I've been away from the blog for a while, thinking maybe I'd finally adjusted to our empty nest (or fretting that I'd gone on far too long about the struggle). But I'm realizing two things: 1) I'll probably never fully adjust, and 2) this season in life (every season in life?) is just one change and one challenge after another. So I'm back, trying to come to terms with my life by writing about it.

For years I've made cranberry-apple-carrot muffins every fall when bags of fresh cranberries first appear in the produce department. I make a batch or two, then cranberries disappear from the grocery store (and I never remember to freeze any), and that's it for another year. Last fall I made a batch when the kids were home, but we didn't end up eating many of them, so I froze the leftovers and Steve and I started taking them in our lunches. When we finished the batch, we missed having them for lunches, so I made more and more until all the cranberries were gone. I tried making other kinds of muffins to take their place, but none were quite as good. Eventually, I tried substituting extra apples and carrots for the missing cranberries, and they were still good! I made batch after batch right up until the end of June. This morning, I mixed up the first batch of the new school year. Then it hit me: tomorrow is Steve's last first day of school; he's retiring at the end of the year. My mind tumbled back through the years as I thought about the way the call from Silver Creek came just in the nick of time in August of 1988--right before I accepted the back-breaking, low-paying job I'd been offered at Fulton-Montgomery Community College.  For the past twenty-nine years, the new year has begun for us not in snowy January but under the blue skies and bright sun of late August/early September. Sure, our back-to-school preparations have changed over the years. I've had to gradually (and grudgingly) adjust to the fact that back-to-school shopping means picking up a new pair of reading glasses rather than buying crayons or calculators or dorm-room bedding. And I've accepted that getting ready for lunch packing means making healthy muffins rather than stocking up on Fruit by the Foot and Fritos. But I can't quite imagine what Labor Day is going to feel like next year when it's not the-day-before-the-first-day-of-school for Steve or how I'll ever get used to not going back to school each August when my own teaching career comes to an end. For now, I guess we'll do what we've always done: take it a day at a time and figure things out as we go along. As for rest of this quiet Labor Day, I think I'll relax, eat a muffin, and get ready to wish Steve a happy last first day of school!

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School Lunches

Our little elementary school had no cafeteria, so if you weren't a "walker," you carried a lunch box, paid a nickel for a little carton of milk, and ate in the classroom. I had a Peanuts lunch box and matching thermos. In those days, thermoses had glass liners, so they didn't usually last as long as the lunch box; if you banged your lunch box around a little too much on the way to school, you'd find shards of broken glass mixed in with whatever you had in your thermos. Most days my lunch box contained a peanut butter sandwich wrapped neatly in waxed paper, but once in  a while I agreed to bologna on squishy white bread with Miracle Whip. In the days before blue ice cold packs, my mom froze water in an old Bactine bottle and tucked that into my lunch box in hopes of keeping my sandwich cool until lunchtime. To go with my sandwich and milk, I had fresh or canned fruit and something sweet for dessert--usually cookies, sometimes little cans of pudding, or if I was really lucky, a Hostess Ho-ho! I loved those little foil-wrapped rolls of chocolate cake and white filling. To make mine last longer, I peeled off the outside layer of chocolate and ate that first, then I carefully unrolled the cake and ate it as slowly as I could. Our elementary school was barely a block from our town's main street, and kids who had money and a note from home got to eat "over town" at the Amber Grill. Eating in town was a rare treat in our family since extra dollars for hamburgers, fries, and a vanilla coke were few and far between.  But every once in a great while, usually when my dad was in charge of the lunch packing for some reason, we would unwrap our sandwiches and see a woven potholder tucked between the two slices of bread along with a dollar and a note giving us permission to go to town for lunch. Part of the fun of eating over town was stopping at Kenny Wilson's candy store on the way back to school for a pack of Sprees or a strip of Zotz candy to keep in your desk and nibble on during the long afternoon hours. Field trip days usually called for bagged lunches (no lunch boxes), and I suppose I usually took my lunch in a plain brown paper bag with my name printed neatly on the front, just like everyone else did, but one time--maybe it was the year my grade got to go to Old Economy--my mom decorated the front of my bag with a garland of flowers.  I loved that bag, not just because it was pretty and festive, but because my busy mom took a few extra minutes to make something special for me to remind me she would be thinking of me when I was on my field trip. It was the same with finding a potholder sandwich and a dollar bill in my lunch box on days my dad was in charge of things. He could have just given us the dollars and notes in the morning, but instead he took a few extra minutes to do something only he would do and made a memory that would last a lifetime. Of course I didn't know it at the time, but those school lunches were doing more than filling my stomach--they were etching a lifelong place in my memory, and they were teaching me about the kind of parent I wanted to be.

Kindergarten Blankets

One of the items on the supply list for kindergarten for each of my kids was "nap mat."  In one of the many conversations a good friend and I had about kindergarten the summer before our first-borns headed off to school, she mentioned that she was going to make her son a thick blanket-like nap mat, using fabric from Jo-Ann's and fluffy polyester batting.  I loved this idea and decided to use Ben's bandanas to make his nap mat.  I did the same thing for my other two children, choosing brightly colored dolphin fabric for my science- and nature-loving middle child and for my youngest, cheerful cotton fabric that featured cute little faces of kids, many of whom had blonde curly hair just like Em's.  In the fourteen years since my youngest finished kindergarten, the blankets have been folded and stacked in the corner of our piano room.  Our house is big and old and drafty, and the kindergarten blankets became couch blankets for watching TV and floor blankets for our old dog who loved a bit of extra warmth and comfort.  Ben's bandana blanket has grown frail with age, so I've tucked it away for safe keeping, but we still use the other two, all these years later.  And every time I pull one out, I think back to those kindergarten days and what a leap of faith it was to send my children out into the world for the first time.  I hoped that when they unrolled their nap mats on days they were feeling sad or tired, they'd be cheered, warmed, and comforted.  I hoped in some subtle way, they would be reminded there was someone at home who loved them and was waiting for them to return at the end of the day.  And now that my children are grown and out in a much bigger world, it's an even bigger leap of faith to let go and watch them live their lives.  They no longer have time to nap or soft little blankets to stretch out on, but still I hope on days they are feeling sad or sick or worried, they know there is someone at home who loves them and is always waiting for the next time they come home.  

First Day of School

For the past forty-six years (except for the two years right after college), the end of August/beginning of September has meant going to school.  You'd think I'd be used to it by now.  I've been teaching at SUNY Fredonia for twenty-five years, yet every single year I get nervous before the first day of school.  My stomach is jumpy and I have trouble sleeping the night before.  I get to my office bright and early and scramble around getting last minute things ready for my first class.  These days my classes are filled with early childhood and childhood education majors, so, in general, they are students who like school and are fun to teach.  This makes the day fly by, and by the time I get home, I'm tired but calm.  The jitters are gone, and the excitement of a new year and new students lingers as I get ready for the second day of school.

Beginning of Day One

End of Day One

Back-to-School Supply Shopping

It starts innocently enough--your child gets a cheery letter from his kindergarten teacher with a list of things he'll need for the school year: a nap mat, some crayons, a couple of pencils, a pair of safety scissors, and maybe a box of Kleenex to contribute to the classroom community.  Add a lunchbox and a backpack, and you're done with back-to-school supply shopping--no sweat. But each year the list of supplies your child needs gets longer; soon you're buying colored pencils, markers, highlighters, erasers, composition notebooks, index cards, Post-it notes, notebook paper, folders, and three-ring binders.  Plus, if you have more than one child in school, you're juggling multiple lists, tastes, and preferences, and back-to-school shopping is starting to feel a little bit stressful.  By the time your kids get to high school and they still need all of the above plus graphing calculators, the stress and expense mount.  But all of that is nothing compared to when they leave for college, and in addition to all the usual school supplies, you're searching online for cheaper-than-bookstore-priced textbooks, as well as all the things they need for their dorm rooms: wastebaskets, lamps, mini fridges, fans, under-the-bed storage boxes, closet organizers, laundry bags, shower caddies, extra-long twin bed sheets, laptop computers, printers, surge protectors, and ethernet cables.  Then a couple of years later when they move to a townhouse or an off-campus apartment, they need pots and pans, mixing bowls, dishes, vacuum cleaners, extra furniture, cleaning supplies, and shower curtains.  You think back to your first child's kindergarten supply list and realize the only thing worse than all the back-to-school supply shopping is going to be the first year you don't have to do it anymore . . . .

Tea, Toast, and Razor Scooters

Sixth grade was a tough year for my son—too much tedious homework and too little joy.  I told my dad about his struggle on the phone part way through the school year, and he suggested that we offer him a reward for making it through a tough situation.  Any time he had an overwhelming amount of homework on a school night, he was supposed to mark it on the calendar, and at the end of the school year, he could trade in all of his frustration for a reward: something big, my dad said, something worth working for.   We decided on a Razor scooter, something my son had been wanting that we couldn’t afford.  There was one catch: no complaining.  Many nights that year, my son stomped down the stairs, made an angry “x” on the calendar and stomped back up, but overall, life was more peaceful.  And now, instead of remembering a bad year in school, he remembers a clever, loving grandpa.  I needed some help solving that problem, but most of the other little troubles of childhood, I could fix with tea and toast or a colorful Band-aid or a night of pizza and videos.  One of the hard things about being the parent of adult children is that now when they are sad or sick or lonely or frustrated or heartbroken, I can’t fix things—the troubles are too big or the pain too deep.  I can pray for them and encourage them.  I can listen and offer advice.  But mostly they have to get better or figure things out on their own. I realized, though, when telling this story, that when my dad found a way to help my son through his sixth grade year, he ended up helping me, too.  So maybe my days of fixing things for my kids aren't completely over either.