Spring always surprises me, probably because I love it so much, and it is so fleeting. It's short and intense at school, but at home, it is slow and still. It draws me back to favorite things of life (and ever the introspection) like November does. But I'm busier now, and so today when I woke up, everything was weird, weird weird. Seasons are changing again, and I'm a fine tuned person. (If I have learned anything personal in my 20s with more clarity, it is this.) But maybe spring feels different this year, or still unconnected to me despite the fact that it is April, because I have moved. I knew it was spring in Stillwater because of how the sun came up over the valley at a certain time of day. Because I had that 20 minutes in the morning to sit on a bench at Pioneer Park in my work clothes and drink coffee and breathe. Nothing more than breathing and feeling a little chilly and watching the valley wake up. Because in Stillwater I slept with the windows open. There was a flowering tree right outside of my window and right about now everything was gloriously muddy. Somehow, still not sure why, new Coldplay music seemed about right for those early mornings. I drank lots of hazelnut coffee in that season of my life, and I knew the sounds of that place very well. Today I kind of missed those sounds. It's clearly getting to be spring again, but there is newness to my new home. Hence, there are also new patterns to be found and established and loved.
I knew when I moved away from Stillwater that my life would change. I knew I would encounter new people who were a lot more like me in my real core. I knew I would drop anchor in a church in the city, which was something I, so suburban in everything else, had been longing for. Longing for. In many ways in Stillwater, I was still and I was stuck. (How my loyal heart initially protects that thought, even a year later, from emerging.) It's whispered in every line I've written since that time...God has breathed new life into my world. I am always so grateful when I think about this. But you leave things to your younger years too, and today that's what I missed.
I know by now that this time of year things need to change. I have to creatively move things in my work space. I have to limit my life as a social butterfly and become more introspective. Have to, or the gears don't work at school. I need to read books by people who wrote things 100 years ago. Spring in the teacher's life is to saturating, so for a little while, I have to quit Facebook too. Change out the picture on my desk, make a new seating chart, liven up the lesson plans, make time for life outside. I have to lay on my car in the country and look at the stars. I have to make time for bare feet again, and laying in the grass with my favorite book. That book aligns with my pulse, and it's because there is a cadence to the words. More than any other time of year, this is the season for that book. In good time, I need to buy some peonies and hydrangeas and put them in the sunlight in my living room.
Seasons invite different kinds of beauty. And so inviting a different kind of beauty, and taking time to see it and live in it, is what I'm talking about here. My life in Stillwater was charming because it was my own first place to call home. I had 'a room of one's own', and while I was there, I did wonder. And I dreamed.
But in a lot of ways it was always a place where I felt trapped, always living alongside my students and experiencing their adolescent candor about who I was. Even at the grocery store. Especially at the grocery store. They even study what you are buying and comment on it later. (Alarming!) That's why I feel relieved here and now to live in a different place.
Still, this little town built into such great hills was my own start, and it's forever beautiful on that level. Little budget, little apartment, little town, little car, little commute, little students. Great big wide amazing St. Croix Valley.
Spring feels different now, and it's a good thing in a different way. Being older hones what you prefer and you breathe differently. I was so hoping life would be that way and it is. But something this morning spoke of the hopefulness of a younger time, and I was happy to invite it back into my morning's dreams.
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