Columbus Day 2019 dawns gray, dull and empty of plans. He goes downstairs, opening the front door leading off onto the porch to check the weather. Upon doing so, he heads quickly back up the stairs claiming out loud what we already knew. It is chilly, damp and gray. There is sugared coffee and hot toasted bagels in the reading room where we settle into a morning of reading and discussion. The only sound from the street is the rumbling wheezing sound of the garbage truck on its rounds…squeaking from house to house as it picks up and empties, picks up and empties.
It is a calm and sheltered world hidden away from the absolute chaos which is bleeding out all over the middle east. The Turks, the Kurds, the Syrian army and in the end…all the innocent civilians who will not live to see the end of this terrible day; it feels wrong to be quietly seated in a safe neighborhood. But what can we do? Reality is usually an odd thing and is not often something which we could have ever guessed. The problems across foreign waters are not simple and neither are the answers.
Right now, those of us resting safely far away, living under the shadow of another flag and underneath the lettering of a different constitution enjoy the long established three day weekend known as Columbus Day, the brief time of respite as we experience the peculiar weariness which comes from the relaxation of effort.
For our Rochester City School teachers, this weekend is pure magic, falling as it does on the third payday of the year. Not only is there money in the bank, there is freedom allotted us, the joy of knowing that Monday is empty of obligations. It falls right at the crucial moment in the beginning of the school year when the bloom is off the rose. The initial energy of the new year, the excitement of the students, and the brief time in which there is relative peace in the school building…all have vanished. We are in for it now. We have begun the long endurance, the grind of monitoring recalcitrant children as we keep our eyes laser focused on the semester’s end. We are used now to the daily foot traffic of troubled children on their way to the room where they journey when they can no longer function in healthy ways in classrooms. Many feet make that lonely trudging trip past my office door, with some children sticking their heads through my door to give me a swift greeting.
Later in the day we ride around enjoying the stunningly beautiful autumn foliage, the brilliant reds, oranges, yellows, golds and copper hues…the Persian rug which lies heavily yet gently over the rolling hills and valleys of this lovely corner of Western New York. The sky looks as if it is ‘full of snow’ as older family members sometimes mention. Next week temperatures are scheduled to dip into the thirties but it is still too early for snow. The heavy sky is a feeling, a warning, a sense…a leading to the search for the heavier blankets stored away in the closets, the scarves buried in drawers and the soft whoosh of furnace heat flooding in waves over the carpeting, up the stairs and under the edges of freshly cleaned curtains.
690 Saint Paul 