The summer was quiet, a necessary healing place safe from the rancor, discord and upset of the recently concluded school year. Nothing, and no teacher or student remained unscathed. The annual educational cycle could be described in simple terms; toxic and anxious. It was manifold, exhausting and downright ugly.
Our building played the role of a decrepit theater; a place where there were so many stories told, untold, imagined, regretted…endured. We waged a bitter war against the obvious and we all lost. When all the final test scores were collected, tallied and announced, our district was found wanting and crawled around miserably, apologetically at the bottom of the swamp.
It was that kind of school year.
Summer. At first it needed to go, that loud creaking noise in the upstairs bathroom, that hidden joist where saddened wood met human weight and slightly mal-aligned boards and screws complained bitterly. It was the perfect summer project.
But then, I was told it could not be fixed. That was that. I sat quietly on the porch and chose to look out at Heaven in the afternoon and watched a soaring, silent bird gliding over the shadow of the creatures which pass unnoticed through our yard at twilight and I finally thought better of the creaking noise upstairs.
The creaking meant someone other than myself and the variety of woodland creatures was home.
It was that sort of summer.
Heat. In the warmth of the buttery sunshine, I watched the neighbor teach his small son to ride a bike while I observed out of the corner of my eye the enormously obese bumble bee tilting wobbly around my porch. The fat insect was harmless, drunk with sun and pollen and summer air. He wove heavily and flitted around the flowers, buzzing half-heartedly.
I heard, ‘Drift and hit the peddles, drift and hit the peddles! No! That’s the wrong driveway!’ I watched the duo, the exasperated father and struggling son disappear at the sidewalk’s edge.
Who was wobbling? The bee? The child? Me?
Summer was like that.
Was there anything more glorious than sitting on the porch in the warm air with a bowl of cold, fresh chicken Caesar salad topped richly with heaps of pickled red onions? I didn’t think so.
From deep within the house drifted the faint strains of Bach’s double concerto, talented hands drove their rosined bows over the strings, coaxing life’s beauty and essence out of cat gut and wood. Marvelous.
I tried envisioning J. S. Bach eating salad topped with pickled red onions. I could not knit that image together in my mind. I placed my bowl carefully on the table next to my chair. The porch was so cool and the neighborhood so very, very quiet.
It was that kind of summer.
690 Saint Paul 