Early Bird

 I’m early to bed and early to rise.  I’m two hours early for flights and thirty minutes early for appointments.  I’ve spent many many minutes parked along roads and streets and cul-de-sacs so I wouldn’t be early to social engagements.

I will most likely be early to my own funeral.

When I was teaching, I’d get to school so early I’d sometimes set off the alarm and, occasionally enough to be worrisome, the Atlanta Police would show up and admonish me.

There may be some connection between birth hour and temporal activity and notions of time.  Two of my three kids, Billy and Molly, are also early arrivers.  They were both born in the morning as was I.  Melissa, who was born in the afternoon, was always late when she was a child and teenager, with me in hatchback, honking the horn, and her telling me to “hold on!” way too many times.  Now that she has children of her own who take forever to get into the car, she’s sped up quite a bit, but she still doesn't see the need to leave an hour before having to be somewhere thirty minutes away.  Go figure.

Even though being early appears indicative of stellar character, at least to me, I can see how it might be annoying to others.  Early birds show up at dinner parties while the hostess is still shaving her legs.  They arrive at interviews while the interviewer is trying to finish off his Big Mac.  And they must annoy shoppers who finesse a timely parking-lot disembark as soon as they can possibly take leave from their Thanksgiving repast to be armed and ready for Wal-Mart's 1 am Black Friday opening, only to find the early birds already camping out, looking smug in their lawn chairs while eating a leftover turkey leg.  I believe that EBs are the ones who get most hit on the head with those big pocketbooks you see flailing around on the evening news.

And then there are certain jobs early birds just can't do.  Arriving at a fire before it starts would be seen as unprofessional at best and perhaps no small amount of suspicious.  The same for removing a gall bladder before it becomes all gross and gnarly, and serving a fine wine before its time.

But, for my oldest best friend, Allison, and me, it's great to be an early bird.  We arrive for dinner before the fashionably-late, hungry hordes, often knocking on the locked restaurant door while the waitstaff is still going over the menu, and then asking for the senior citizen special.

We aren't annoying at all.

Time

A message to the parents of my students this year:

Each morning as the sun first peeks into my classroom window and I prepare for the day, I stand at the board and write the date with an orange marker. I began this school year with Monday, August 9, 2010, and soon I’ll write Tuesday, May 24, 2011.

And that will be it.

Just as I’ll never again write those specific dates on that board in an orange marker on those particular days, neither will I ever again greet your child as my own as he or she arrives, wet-combed hair or bed head, lunch in hand or sorrowfully left in the back seat of the car, eagerly or reluctantly facing the morning, a story to tell, something to share.

We talk of good news and bad, new pets or those who’ve left us, family trips in our future or in our past, ballgames won or lost, times of trouble and times of bliss. We spar with jokes and insults; we forgive and sometimes forget; we argue and then offer ourselves for comfort.

Living with twenty or so children seven hours a day, five days a week, ten months a year is an experience much greater than a curriculum map or an attendance sheet or test scores or discipline plan. We become a family and what happens between the four walls of our classroom is as complicated and tender as what can be found in any home. We share our laughter and tears and pain and wonderment with each other a hundred times a day. We have a common language and agreed-upon jokes; specific memories that no one else on earth will ever have.

My second-graders will move on and love their third-grade teacher in spite of what they promise me now. They will never remember me as I remember them - they with their gappy teeth and shorts in winter and fake tattoos and fledgling understandings of who they are and what they’ll become.

Time is such a trickster. It hides itself in routine, in menial jobs to be done, in minor irritations that keep us from realizing we’re in the midst of something amazing. We become mired in the details and often lose track of the gift. I wish I could tie up this year in a ribbon and give it to myself when I need a lift, or to be reminded of what’s important; when I need a good laugh or an even better cry.

I’ll want to remember and to tuck it all away because this year has been as no other year. No other class was like this class and no other children were like these children. We were Mayo’s class and it will never be the same.

 

Many thanks to Nance at Mature Landscaping for this award