It’s Spring Break for the kiddos. And, it’s been raining all week. Rain is hardly ever a welcome meteorologic phenomenon in my world. It’s become even less-so during this time of lockdown. We have so very few options for respite from the walls that surround us, from each other, from the staid repetition of our Groundhog Days. Yet, the melancholy that accompanies the rain is not a phenomenon isolated within this time of pandemic. Not for me at least. This week’s deluge took me back to this time almost a year ago. A time of uncertainty tinged with hope. I wrote then…
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May 1, 2019
The clouds yielded to the sun this afternoon. It had only been two days of spring showers…well 2 ½ to be precise (I was counting). My being was drawn outside to soak in the rays, the warmth, the vitamin D, the hope. The sun brought with it reminders for me to see, to smell, to touch and breathe, to appreciate the wonders that exist even in our own backyards, in the sky that stretches infinitely above us, in the soaring birds that somehow just instinctively know the science that makes gliding through air possible. There’s all sorts of becomingness happening in my backyard. Fruits of the nutrients I’ve offered to the plants, the nutrients that are part of nature…rain, sun, soil, worms, hummingbirds, butterflies…all doing what they instinctively know to do.
Perhaps that is what I’m in search of in this coming year, this year of sabbatical. What do I instinctively know how to do? How do I instinctively know how to grow? How might I feed my soul with nutrients and warmth to blossom into what I am meant to be? Does the lemon tree know that its buds will become flowers, that will become hard, green nodules that will grow into beautiful, fragrant, acidic, sweet lemons? Is there an end game in mind, or does it just stay present to what is becoming in the cycle of seasons, of shedding, of hibernation, of new growth, of full, luscious, succulent fruit?
Tonight, I teach my final class. It’s a day I have been trodding toward, counting down to, longing for, for eight months. In February, I told the kids and Sonnie with anticipation “only ten more teaching nights!” When this class, my last, began four weeks ago, we cheered for just four more. Now, we’re at one. Tomorrow there will be zero.
I can’t remember the last time I looked forward to a teaching night other than the fact that having seen it through would get me one closer to the end. It hasn’t been dread, but there has been a heaviness that accompanies each preparation for teaching…an uneasiness…a not knowing what is to come. In the moment, while teaching, I don’t feel this way. Sometimes I feel enlivened. Generally, I feel interested. By the conclusion of most class sessions, I feel that I have offered something of value. I have not held back, and that has felt good…true to me. I went into this class with the benefit of the freedom that the last one offers, intent on being true to myself. I didn’t want to put on a mask. I wanted to be me.
The finality of tonight’s session and what it represents has been present to me all day. I told Sloane excitedly, “I teach tonight, and it’s the last one!” Teaching nights are hard for her. She misses me, for some reason more than she misses me when I’m away at night for other reasons. Maybe she senses a sadness in me, or an anxiety. Maybe it’s not just my physical presence that feels absent to her, but some part of my essence that someone so young and unfettered by layers of “shoulds” can notice. Maybe she instinctively is tapping into what we as adults have to strip away to reveal…to admit.
I would have thought I would be dancing a jig on this day. There is relief. There is some resignation. There is also some fear of what comes after today. Today is not the end. I still have final grading next week. Grant proposals to review for faculty during that same period. Even still, come next Friday when grades are turned in and recommendations offered, it won’t be the end. Is the end when I give my notice at the beginning of June? When I’m officially on academic leave on June 10th? When my employment is finally done on June 30?
Perhaps more importantly, when is the beginning? The beginning of being? And, how will I be in this being?
What comes after the rain? The rain I don’t like. The rain that makes me sad and sleepy and cold. I told Townsend yesterday, “The rain should be gone tomorrow. Aren’t you glad?” He said, “I like the rain. It’s good for us.” So it is…
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There’s much in life that we rush beyond. That we don’t reflect on in our push to get to what feels better. To get to knowing…certainty. But, this place of discomfort, like the rain, is good for us. There are lessons here. We can’t begin to know what lies beyond this moment, or when this moment will end. All we have is this. Now. What might we discover in the now? What might we see more clearly now, because of the rain, than before? What is our essence that has been clouded over by the trappings of life as we have created it? What is this pandemic forcing us to strip away? What gifts does it reveal?
A year ago, the hope that arrived after the rain was for some unknown, yet longed-for state, at some untouchable time in the future, to bring with it untold gifts and discovery. There was something that existed beyond that moment then. And, there is something that exists beyond this moment now. As then, we can’t begin to know what our world will look like post-COVID-19.
Yet, some things remain true…like the rising and setting of the sun and moon even when the clouds obscure our sight. Like the chirping of the birds, and the blossoming of the flowers, and the ripening of the fruit. Like who we are at our core…the light and the shadow. These things are perhaps more apparent now than ever…because of the rain.
What if we were to not hang hope and agency on the possibilities that may arrive after the rain? Might the beginning of being be now? How will you be in this being?