New Year’s is overrated. It may have astronomical import, but the planet’s most distant location in space (relative to the Sun) provides more of an intellectual oddity than a physical one.
Things don’t “feel” different around New Year’s.
Things “feel” different when it’s time to go back to school. Things “feel” different in Autumn.
Here in New England, all of life seems to take stock at the approach of autumn, at the approach of school. Life seems to reflect on its growth over the past year, and regardless of what it finds, it primes itself for the work yet to come.
Think of New England’s arboreal flames, the last explosions of the forest’s sugars; the trees of life burning brightly and boldy before retreating into the warm, moist depths of the soon to be solid ground.
As the new school year approaches, I — a lifelong student and teacher — feel myself priming up, getting excited, getting eager.
Yes, winter is coming. Yes, the days will grow cold and dark; the wind will turn hard. Yes, students will frustrate, challenge, and even disappoint. And yes, a moment will come that feels as if everyone is as distant as they can be (relative to me). But that is in the future.
Right now, I feel myself priming up, getting excited, getting eager.
The air is perfect — not too hot; not too cold. The wind is just right. Rain clouds, when they appear, are welcomed with light blankets and half-read books. The laughter of summer is not yet gone: afternoons and evenings out on the stoop, children playing in the street until the last touch of dusk; a neighbor strums a ukelele and it’s not unpleasant.
The workday idealizes the ultimate school, the ultimate subject, the ultimate project, the ultimate class. Daily stresses keep one’s feet on the ground, but the freedom of the departing summer’s clouds remind one of what wonders may come.
The start of a new school year, the arrival of a New England autumn — these are magisterial and magical times — and in them, in their paradox of beautiful exhaustion, I feel renewed.