The new semester starts today. The long, languid summer is officially over. Soon I need to organize my stuff and head out, back to West Hall and rooms 311 and 409, where apparently I will spend the majority of the rest of my school days.
I miss my flip-flops already.
I heard them before I could see them. Noisy honking, the sound of air beaten by wings. Six geese flew over the tops of the trees in my front yard early this morning. Six geese. Years ago I believed that if I saw six geese flying it was a sign that everyone in my family was happy, well and safe. I believe that still.
I had the most amazing experience tonight. Arriving home from work about 7:30 p.m. the sun had begin to lower in the sky when I took the dog out to the front yard after her supper. As she was sniffing around looking for a good place for her deposit I became aware of a large amount of birds flying overhead, from the neighbor’s oak trees to my birch trees. More and more birds began to flock into the birch trees, but I couldn’t get a good look at them as I was facing into the setting sun.
I moved with the dog around to the other side of my grove of trees, trying to be quiet which was a stretch while attached to an eight month old sheltie. The birds were swooping out of the trees snapping at insects and then returning to the trees. I still couldn’t tell for sure what they were. The setting sun was making them glow gold, and I thought I could catch a bit of a topper on the head and maybe a bright stripe tipping the tail feathers. But I wasn’t sure.
I could hear their wings as they swooped and glided above me. I moved further around the trees, and could see that the sky above my trees in the back yard was filled with these birds. I began to suspect they were cedar waxwings which move in large groups and decend on an area all at once. For a picture of a cedar waxwing, check out this site:
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Cedar_Waxwing.html
I stood quietly, telling Katie to Shhhh! and watched for quite a time, then moved her inside and went back out with my binoculars. Sure enough, when I could finally find one that sat still for a second, at the tip of an oak tree, it was confirmed. A whole flock of cedar waxwings had set up a temporary feeding station in my yard.
I stood in the yard watching them playing and eating, swooping, twisting in the golden light, and listening to them chirp to each other for a long time, until the sun went down and the air cooled and finally they flew away, one big flock of beautiful birds glowing in the last rays of the sun.
Hey Mom, wish you could have seen this. Then again, since I saw it, I guess you did too!
Just another week and school will start. After the endless summer it will, I hope, feel good to have a bit (OK, a lot) more structure in my life. I stopped at a book store this week and bought the textbooks for two of my five classes. Almost $200 later I lugged a big bag of books up to the bus stop. Hmmm….this is beginning to seem like work. I haven’t actually looked at the books I purchased…no sense getting excited (or depressed) too soon!
Meanwhile I am starting to have dreams about school. Dreams where I am lost and can’t find the class, which is hilarious because four out of my five classes meet in one of two rooms at the school!
Tonight I think I will try to have a dream about school where I get all A’s.
Tonight as I drove home from work there was a full moon hanging over the University Hospital. I contemplated it as I thought about my evening on the reference desk. Tonight seemed to be the night for unrealized dreams. Or dreams just being figured out.
My first patron wanted information about the Seattle library system. She was contemplating moving there and didn’t want to go unless “their library is as good as this one.” So we looked through their online catalog, and searched their services all the while trying to compare their institution to ours. I think she’s headed to Seattle. She has no job there, but she hates the winters here, so she’s just going to go for it.
Shortly I had an older man that wanted to find out “how hospitals work.” Not because he thought he’d be admitted to one, but because he had just landed a job at a hospital and he wanted to “move up” quickly. So he was looking for books that told him more about the place where he was going to work.
Just before close a woman stopped by the desk for help in contacting the three universities she had attended in the 70’s. She never finished her undergraduate degree and she wanted to go back to school. She planns on majoring in dance. Her parents hadn’t let her do that when she was just out of high school, and she wants to do it now. She proudly told me she was 58 years old and is finally going to do something she wants to do.
Dreamers, all of them. I wished them all my best.
Today I walked the Crim race in Flint. It’s a ten mile “race” that I have never raced, but always run before. Today was the first time I ever walked the 10 miles. I had the official pink number pinned onto the front and back of my shirt, so that course monitors could make sure I didn’t cheat and run any part of the course. Right. Like that was going to happen!
I happened to meet a woman just before the start standing next to me who walked a bit faster than me. We ended up walking the entire course together, which made it a lot more fun. I was able to tell her about the route as it was her first time doing the ten miles, and she and I shared stories about our lives.
I had hoped that walking this event would inspire me to get back to running. I assumed that there would be portions of the course that would beg to be run instead of walked. But I was wrong. I had such a good time walking it at a 16 minutes per mile pace that I didn’t consider any part of it runable!
I’m wondering if I have turned into a walker from a runner. Being a walker was something my mother was; I hadn’t thought I had aged so fast. This will require some thinking.
It’s with excitement and a bit of anxiety that I wait for school to start. Just over a week away now, the start of the school year looms. I remind myself how much I enjoyed last year, and how fast it went. But still first day school jitters remain. Will I like my classes? Will I be able to do the work? How will I fit school and work into the same week?
In the end I’m sure it will be fine. I’m already nostalgic for summer and it’s not even officially over yet. I’m already missing days with no agenda, sweet summer evenings without homework, spending an idle hour napping under the trees with Katie the dog, sleeping in until I (or Katie) wake up, sipping ice tea while contemplating what to eat for lunch. Ah…those were the days!
Funny how you can be having a normal, nice day with nothing special on your mind and as you are driving your dog to doggie school you stop at a red light and casually watch traffic crossing on the I 75 bridge above and in front of you. And as you wait for your light to turn green you notice a semi coming from your left up on the freeway, not doing anything special or different, just coming up to the bridge. And suddenly you realize how fast that semi is coming toward any stationary spot, and you realize finally and for sure that it wouldn’t have mattered if your Dad had been in a bigger vehicle. You can see that it wouldn’t have mattered what size car he was in, that he didn’t have a chance, and as the semi comes over the bridge and passes your imaginary stationary spot suddenly you are inside a car that is spinning around and crashing down and your blood and brains are splashing on the passenger airbag and on the back door and there is nothing, nothing at all that you can do. And then you shake you head to get that vision out of your brain, and the traffic light turns green, and the dog is restless and you move on. But a mile or two down the road you can’t remember where the turn is to get to doggie school; you aren’t really sure where you’re going, as you fight to put the vision back behind the vestiges of a normal day.
You can feel the end of summer in the air. It was 46 degrees out this morning at 5:30 when Katie the dog decided she MUST have a walk outside. Bits of leaves are beginning to turn. Tomatoes are green and aching for that last bit of summer heat to turn red, I hope they (and we) get some.
As I rode the bus into work yesterday I noted that students are beginning to move back into Ann Arbor. Roads are busier, sidewalks more full, bus drivers impatient. I see young people sitting at the sidewalk cafes with others that can only be parents, enjoying the sunshine and their first few days at school, their last few days as a kid with mom or dad. I don’t remember those days. I think my folks just dropped my stuff outside the dorm and said a hasty goodbye before they rushed back to the other three kids waiting at home. I think the transition for me was much more abrupt.
I spent a week this month with my sister wading in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron at the tip of the lower peninsula under the Big Mac bridge where we camped as a family back in the 70’s. She and I also explored Petosky and Charlevoix and Traverse City. We shopped till we dropped on this trip and have our Christmas shopping pretty well done.
So now vacation time is done, school is starting. I feel like a kid again, waiting anxiously for that first day of school. This summer has felt like those summers so long ago. An endless summer with enough activities to keep me happy and interested but enough free time to lounge around and realize how lucky I am as well. An endless summer I won’t soon forget
Now…do I get to go shopping for school clothes?
I left the house early this morning for my walk. It was already warm, and this day promises to be a scorcher. As I emerge from my subdivision the sun is just rising on my right, a hot bright red light below the tree line. The full moon is still in the sky to my left, a pale pink shadow of it’s former self. I decide to walk with my head held high, focusing on the distant road ahead, rather than watching my feet, hoping to ease the backache I generally get after a few miles. Today’s route is one of my favorites; a hilly four mile loop through farm country and back through town. As I come out from under the cover of trees the sun burns the side of my face. I reconsider my route. If I take the full loop the last mile will be uphill and in the sun. Not a good combination. Better to go two miles, turn around and come back, I will enjoy the farms and woods twice.
Keeping my head high and focusing on everything around me rather than my feet I inevitably notice subtle signs of fall. A group of robins flocking under old apple trees, feasting on the yellow, fallen fruit, the side of the road littered with walnuts and further down the road hickory nuts, a horse pasture covered in queen anne’s lace and edged with heavy goldenrod.
Reaching mile one a fat old beagle rests on the porch of a farmhouse. Apparently I am important enough to bay at, but not important enough to leave the porch. His barking attracts the attention of a retreiver who streams out of the family garden where he is undoubtedly hunting for woodchucks and chipmunks. He too deems me unimportant and goes back about his business. I find it difficult, with my head held high and eyes ahead, to place my feet against the undulating hills and valleys of the washboard road. I focus on my feet again.
A pebble slips quietly into my shoe as if wishing to be transported to another place. Like me it feels the urge to explore new destinations, experience new things, see new sights. I decide to let it ride there in my shoe as long as it doesn’t become obnoxious. Somewhere a horse calls for breakfast. A quarter mile to go up a hill until the turn around point, I begin to feel the strain and concentrate on my breathing, the way I would if I was struggling while running. The horse calls again, closer now. I see her, a beautiful golden horse with a bleached blond mane under a tree. Pretty girl I call, the tail swishes in reply.
A white cat sits beside a mailbox at the top of the hill. It’s staring at me. I stare back. Maybe it isn’t a white cat. Maybe it’s a small dog. I gain the top of the hill and the little white dog darts back up his driveway, barking and growling. As I make the turn he moves back to the mailbox, still barking. Brave little dog I call to him. He snarls in return and holds his ground protecting his family and his mailbox from the likes of me.
I pick up the pace on the downhill and head for home.
Change Is Hard