Paying Attention in CinCity

-



School began again here in CinCity on Tuesday. I continued to deny it for a couple of days because I was working, but today I have driving duty and my September-May routine slid automatically back into its groove.

I'll have to pay closer attention this year since one of these morning drives will be my last. I won't know it though until weeks or months later. HoneyHaired has her temps. She's working on her driving hours. Once she gets her license some crazy work schedule conflict will arise which will just make it simpler for her to drive to school and that will be that. I remember many days of driving CollegeGrrrl back and forth, up and down and round and round, but I had no inkling that it would end so suddenly and so completely. Even as I write this I know I won't realize it this year either for that is the nature of baby birds leaving the nest.

So, I will strive to follow the words of wise men and yogis far and wide to BE PRESENT, and to pay attention, because, you know, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”--Yogi Berra


please note: art by Patrick Glover


To A High School Senior
by Pat Schneider

Don't go. Don't stay.
Daughter. Morning after afternoon
the last year slips away.

Singing all the old songs, you will go
(ambivalence of moon, certainty of sun)
we know

only half of what we are.
The earth is earth to us, star
perhaps

if apprehended far enough away.
Daughter – don't go.
Don't stay.

Comments

  1. AnonymousAugust 19, 2010 at 8:13 AM

    Oh! so much emotion.....love that! smiles.

    ReplyDelete
  2. NanceAugust 19, 2010 at 8:23 AM

    Sigh. BTS is too ominous and looming for this Teacher. I'm in complete Denial.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The PliersAugust 19, 2010 at 8:57 AM

    Continued happiness as you keep letting go.

    Your daughters are very lucky to have you letting go like that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. OwenAugust 19, 2010 at 9:11 PM

    With a daughter heading into her last year of high school here, I'm already in a state of denial. I think. Or maybe I'm wrong... I don't know.

    She's been growing up fast while I've been a working fool. Can't get those years back. Can't accept that, but have no choice...

    Lovely poem, I like it, I hate it...

    ReplyDelete
  5. LydiaAugust 20, 2010 at 12:24 AM

    A special post. And that poem! I will send it to my sister who is having great difficulty with her oldest son beginning his final year in high school.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Hey, thanks for your thoughts and your time:>)

Popular posts from this blog

10 Things I Love That Start With the Letter E

-
Image
Game imported from Sweet Annie at Blissful Bohemian . Name ten things you love that begin with a specific letter. In my case, the letter E. So here goes: 1. Well, first of all there's elephants . Who doesn't love those cute little faces?? And what's not to love? Elephants are actually a lot like humans. They laugh and cry. They grieve over their dead. They play games with each other and have fantastic memories so they can even remember the rules and not go to bed mad. 2. Then there's Engelbert Humperdinck, who I don't actually love and his singing's just on this side of okay, but I do love his name. 3. I luuuuuuv eggs , deviled. Nothing fancy, just classic. Best Basic Deviled Eggs 6 eggs, hard cooked and peeled 1/4 cup mayonnaise 1 teaspoon yellow mustard 3/4 teaspoon white wine vinegar pinch of salt (optional) fresh ground black pepper (optional) smoked paprika (optional) Cut eggs in half. Arrange egg whites cut side up on a serving plate and put the yolks ...
Read more

The Poet Goes to Indiana by Mary Oliver

-
Image
I'll tell you a half-dozen things that happened to me in Indiana when I went that far west to teach. You tell me if it was worth it. I lived in the country with my dog— part of the bargain of coming. And there was a pond with fish from, I think, China. I felt them sometimes against my feet. Also, they crept out of the pond, along its edges, to eat the grass. I'm not lying. And I saw coyotes, two of them, at dawn, running over the seemingly unenclosed fields. And once a deer, but a buck, thick-necked, leaped into the road just-oh, I mean just, in front of my car— and we both made it home safe. And once the blacksmith came to care for the four horses, or the three horses that belonged to the owner of the house, and I bargained with him, if I could catch the fourth, he, too, would have hooves trimmed for the Indiana winter, and apples did it, and a rope over the neck did it, so I won something wonderful; and there was, one morning, an owl flying, oh pale angel, into the hay loft o...
Read more

A Year with EB White

-
Image
"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."----- from Charlotte's Web I am a soul always drawn and fascinated by the idea of " A Year of...". A Year of Rumi. A Year of Calvin and Hobbes. A year cooking with Julia Child. A project that provides guidance for the year and a ruler we can measure inward growth in the course of our circle around the sun. One year, after an early marriage and an unsurprising--except to me--early divorce, I came across a book by Sue Hubbell titled A Country Year. I didn't plan for it to take a year to read, but it did. I only read it at night before I went t...
Read more