Saturday, May 29, 2010

Feeling Fine

On this lazy Saturday morning, here's why:

1. Only one more week of teaching. Endings come so fast, and by my very nature I do not like them. But I do like summer. Last night as M and I strolled downtown for some Puerto Rican cuisine, we were surrounded by adolescent merrymaking (beeping horns, deep-throated yells) and realized that Santa Rosa high school had just celebrated their graduation. Youth glowed all around us.

I remembered singing Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" with my best friend Lauren as we cruised out of our own graduation, 13 years ago, giddy with freedom and possibility. Bittersweet joy welled up inside of me. I confronted my own impending ending, my fifth graduation as a Nonesuch teacher, letting go another crop of kids I've come to love. And just as that reality hit, I saw a graduate lingering in a parking lot with his mom, looking bored and friendless. It just broke my heart. But who knows what life will bring him?

2. After days and days of being betrayed by the sky, dumping out-of-season rain from thick gloomy clouds, the sun is finally shining.

3. Free Mind Media, the anarchist info center/lending library is closing its doors because they can't pay their rent. There is nothing happy about this, especially since more than ever people need access to alternative ideas. The bright side? I got to prowl through shelves and boxes plucking books, zines, and all manner of inspiring reading material. Nothing feeds me like reading, not even that warm nutmeg French toast digesting in my belly.

4. I feel so loved. My fiancé spontaneously cooked dinner for me and my girlfriends the other night. He served us champagne and picked a garden-fresh salad, then whisked the plates away and gave us space to chatter and laugh and have our sweet girl time.

5. There is nothing that I absolutely have to do today. And a long weekend unfurls...

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