Some time around the 4th of July those school marquees
that urge us all to “Have a Safe Summer” become ironic and a little
bittersweet. Then you go into the local Mega Store and see the vast
end-caps of “Back to School” stuff and you realize the end is in sight.
The cicadas still sing in the trees at night and the temperatures are
still in the high-nineties but the writing is on the wall.
Suddenly the project list goes into hyper-drive. We got the shed built but what about cleaning out the garage? The boys’ rooms need to be rearranged, the woodpile needs to be shifted, the fallen tree needs to be chopped up. The regrets set in: I never took that motorcycle trip to the mountains to trout fish with my brother; I never wrote that short story; we didn’t go out as a family as much.
Time presses all around now - in more ways than one. Going in to my school early, to get the jump on classroom work, I’m cognizant of the fact that most of the people who worked there back when I was hired seventeen years ago are long gone. The department heads were walking new employees around, giving them the old tour. There are maybe six faculty members who were hired before me. I have become an Old Timer even in comparison with most Old Timers there.
And there’s this, too - my oldest son is going to be a junior. In two years he’ll be gone, graduated. Time moves in two ways: quickly and slowly. At the center is a glacial time creep in which the Now expands at a pace the naked eye can’t perceive. Meanwhile at the outer edge time rushes forward exponentially and tomorrow the babies are grown and gone, physical edge strikes like a virus and exhaustion becomes your constant companion.
Suddenly the project list goes into hyper-drive. We got the shed built but what about cleaning out the garage? The boys’ rooms need to be rearranged, the woodpile needs to be shifted, the fallen tree needs to be chopped up. The regrets set in: I never took that motorcycle trip to the mountains to trout fish with my brother; I never wrote that short story; we didn’t go out as a family as much.
Time presses all around now - in more ways than one. Going in to my school early, to get the jump on classroom work, I’m cognizant of the fact that most of the people who worked there back when I was hired seventeen years ago are long gone. The department heads were walking new employees around, giving them the old tour. There are maybe six faculty members who were hired before me. I have become an Old Timer even in comparison with most Old Timers there.
And there’s this, too - my oldest son is going to be a junior. In two years he’ll be gone, graduated. Time moves in two ways: quickly and slowly. At the center is a glacial time creep in which the Now expands at a pace the naked eye can’t perceive. Meanwhile at the outer edge time rushes forward exponentially and tomorrow the babies are grown and gone, physical edge strikes like a virus and exhaustion becomes your constant companion.
