A Teacher's Song

 

Ice Forming on Boardwalk in St. Ignace

                           

Death of my husband forced me to go back to school. I wasn’t just a teacher in a first-grade classroom. My role was a student, too. A rookie.

1st -  I had to deal with pain and listlessness of my mind and body until I had strength.

2nd - I re-told my story over and over until I knew I couldn’t change one letter or punctuation mark. Which made me realize…I couldn’t redo or undo the past.

3rd - The language of life I spoke and listened to no longer made sense. It became gibberish. It felt like letter by letter, word by word I had to learn again. 

4th - I was a solo student in a room of teachers. I had to sift through them. To figure out I could only listen to one at time. They are still in cahoots with each other, they have a shared theme…life and me in this life.

Yesterday, on U of M's campus I sat in small memorial garden, during my long walk. The new baby-leaves were waving in the sunlight, I wanted to memorize them.

Baby Leaves

I tried to really see them as they were. They quickly evolve into shade material.

In this grove of trees a cardinal began to sing away, like I was his audience. Slowly, as I sat very still, I realized he was not separate from me. 

He is my teacher. Without his insistence on making a racket, I would have just looked and heard him as I would have a sculpture in an art museum. Like I could walk away and be separate from him. I could chose to be changed by the artist’s work or walk away.

We do not weave the web of life, we are merely a strand in it.

Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. 

Teach your children what we have taught our children: 

that the earth is our mother. 

Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the children of the earth.

                                                                                                     Chief Seattle 

Today, I see the wilting, solo tulip I planted differently. It isn’t my small garden. The chewed out pieces of the tulip by a bunny and the six other bulbs the squirrels found and carried away, were not mine to begin with.

The squirrels, bunnies and tulips may not be attending the graduation ceremonies at University of Michigan this week, but they are here.

Thank you for your song, I’m sorry I haven’t really heard you before.

It doesn’t come natural for me to think I reside with spiders and insects, but the lessons keep sinking in. 

Other Teachers:

Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2013. 

The Power of TED*, by David Emerald, 2016