It is a time of great change: school has started for both Rain and me, I have scaled back my hours, considerably, at the cafe, my birthday has come and gone, and Summer is making way for Fall. Of course, there are smaller shifts happening all around these bigger changes, as the cascading effect of change is inevitable. Being in school means that I am less available for all of the other activities I either enjoy doing or have, over the course of time, become responsible for. Fortunately, we humans are amazingly adaptable. Week three of school has arrived and I am starting to feel as though the aftershocks are subsiding and the ground beneath my feet is settling again.
Still, it took tremendous effort to get myself to that first day of school, which was not everyone else's first day of school. I haven't been a student in a handful of years and never at this level, so I just had no idea how much preparation was involved in starting college. Summer came and went without me knowing I had long ago been assigned a school email account, so unbeknownst to me emails full of important information had piled up all summer! Several of those emails were on the topic of medical forms (all of you former college students can sigh in commiseration here), more specifically the issue of vaccinations. Good heavens! I had no idea that it would require three whole weeks of bureaucratic hoop-jumping to resolve this issue, but it did. A multitude of phone calls made and received, a dozen visits to my doctor's office, a flurry of faxes sent and received later, my medical hold was lifted and, on week two, I walked onto campus, a college Junior. Talk about a happy woman! I was giddy! It amused me to glance about the room at my classmates, most of whom are 18 and freshly graduated from high school, and see their faces glazed with either boredom or incomprehension, their bodies fidgety and flighty, while I was totally relaxed and utterly absorbed. I am there to learn and to apply what I learn to very specific goals, which gives me focus, excitement, and energy.
Rain came home from school a few days ago and said, "You're studying the Constitution, right?" I nodded. "Yup, in two of my classes. "He smiled." We're studying the Constitution!" "Oh, cool!" I exclaimed. "I guess we'll have a lot to talk about." He smiled again, nodded knowingly. "We certainly will." School has the power to bring me even closer to my son's daily reality, instead of dragging me further from it, and perhaps it can give each of us opportunity to see ourselves in the other, to find empathy and correlation. Anything that keeps me connected to my son is a blessing.
I have loved the Fall my whole life, and I guess for many reasons. School has always been "my element," so Fall has always been "my season," with back-to-school being a welcome imposition of structure, order, and focus. School forces me to harness and channel my energies in very productive and illuminating ways and provides me great opportunity to express myself in ways that are helpful to others. It creates an environment in which I am not only free to indulge my curiosities, my analytical tendencies, my expressive drive, but required to! What a luxury! What a joy! Fall is also the season of my birth, so it feels like the beginning of my new year each and every time. I get so energized and excited about possibilities, dreams, goals. Not only do we harvest in Fall, but we glance forward from that harvest with a sense of what will be required of us to succeed in the following season. At the threshold of every ending is a new beginning.
The nicest thing about not being at the cafe so much is that I get to wear my hair down. It's a silly thing, but I'm ready for the freedom of it. I feel liberated! Also, I get to put on clothes in the morning that are still pretty clean when I take them off at night (not infused with the scent of chili and cupcakes or streaked with stains of every sort), and almost no one asks me to do anything for them. If they do, it's not because I am standing behind a counter that infers my subservience, but because they see that I have skills that can help them get where they want to go. A welcome change. What I have found difficult is letting go of all that has defined me for so long. I walk into that space, any space really, and see all of the details which add up to a feeling of harmony and order, all the little things that make a space welcoming, and I attend to them efficiently and with vigor. I perform about six people's jobs! Knowing that no one else does what I do has me concerned that those things just won't get done and I know how important they are. Lately, I've been taking note of those almost unseen tasks and teaching others how to see and perform them, too. I guess it's one way to stave off the nagging notion that I am abandoning something that truly needs me. But, maybe it's only ego that has me believing it needs me. Perhaps it really doesn't. I guess I'll find out as time passes.
I have dropped in on a wave of change and I am falling, feet beneath me, heart giddy with excitement, down its face, feeling the pull of its power. I have committed myself to change and, soul surfer that I am, I know that once we've committed all we can do is ride that wave.
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