School’s back in session, and if the elementary school curriculum has any resemblance to my experience, early fall means kids still have gym class outside and they’re playing soccer before moving inside for the dreaded square dancing unit.
Square dancing. I’m not sure how it snuck into gym class, since the exercise was more social than physical.
Based on our gym teacher’s eye rolls, I’m sure he dreaded the annual dance lesson more than we did. He had to watch wee people suck all the life out of fun and make mistakes he knew we’d make again and again, just with more sophistication and dedication, as we aged. I wonder if our chaos triggered an annual reckoning for him; a weeks-long review of all his life choices that brought him to standing in the gym with us. I think he paid us back by positioning the boys at the four corners of the dance and making the girls pick their partners.
There was no way out. Partner dances need partners. What we didn’t need was a bad case of cooties.
We wanted to dance with our first or second (or, in a pinch, third) crush and had to maintain a bored, annoyed affect while we figured out the social pecking order and how to get the partner we wanted without becoming the talk of the jungle gym. So we pondered and paced, staring at our classmates, fingers on chins and brows furrowed, as if we were solving world hunger and this square dance silliness was just getting in our way.
Time was our savior. Every class, and eventually the dance unit came to an end.
Square dancing moved to rope climbing and then on to basketball and volleyball before heading into spring with track and field.
A new school year starts, learning launches, and class decorations and construction paper colors morph. Even the sleepiest student can’t miss the changing seasons.
Years away from the rhythms of school, so many markers have fallen away, and I worry things slip by me.
Maine’s seasons make things trickier. June was long, chilly and clogged with fog, and we passed the summer solstice before the hot sun declared itself. My garden should be a solid marker, but my potatoes hatched early, and my zucchini plants gave me the stink eye and didn’t grow (again). Some flowers came early and some not at all. It feels like our seasons have shifted so we have winter, you thought winter was over but think again, summer, summer without tourists, and back to winter again.
Working from home makes time even squishier. There’s no office party for Denise’s birthday in January or Kathy’s in August. I don’t have air conditioning to complain about or weather to navigate on my commute up and down my bedroom stairs. And the work is constant and predictable, deadlines like tides. Even big projects fall within the normal flow.
And adulting, or maybe just my stodgy, adult brain, gets in the way of recognizing seasons. For reasons that must have felt pressing, but I can’t remember them, I didn’t get into my kayak until mid-August. We brought it down to the water in early spring, lashed it to our stairs, and there it sat, waiting while I let months of kayaking season pass before I lifted a paddle.
But on a glorious weekend, we took a pause and paddled through small swells and wakes. The salty sea splashed my legs, dripping and streaking my sunscreen. We passed moorings and floats and cormorants drying their wings. We watched a blue heron ride air currents on a lazy fly-about. Roger did me the ultimate honor of not bringing his fishing gear so we could paddle together, and together, we landed at the Dolphin to sip a drink on the lawn and look to the horizon.
There’s something about the sun and wind on my face and quiet moments with an infinite view that slows time and makes memories.
On the way home we waved to neighbors, and they waved us in, inviting us for happy hour in the golden sun.
Now that feels like summer.
So many of our neighbors in Harpswell make their living based on the rhythm of the seasons. From the feel of the water or the lines at their businesses, they know where we are in the calendar, and I take cues from them. I hear more early morning traffic and boat engines when we roll out of winter. I get used to the shifting morning sun knowing some started their day even earlier, in the dark. Now, as the first cold edge of fall air glides over us and summer people depart, the sounds and rhythms will change again.
And I’ll pay better attention.
The lesson my elementary school gym teacher wanted me to learn, and the lesson I seem to need to relearn and relearn again, is that life is strung together with moments, and we get to decide if we bind those moments with joy or something else. I can make my own markers and create memories that will root me in time.
So, while jumping into the freezing ocean is out of the question for me, kayaking is a joy. And bundling up to make an angel in the first snowfall sounds like magic. And when we dance, and we all should, dance with the one who brung ya.
Because joy with people you love makes the deepest roots of all.
