When There's Time To Reflect

She has time now. The school year is all but done. Her last day came unexpectedly when the teachers' union announced a full scale strike. She crammed what she could into the boot of her car and the next day she walked the picket line.

Walking is meditative, especially when it is back and forth along a straight grassy line, the edge of a sidewalk. One foot after the other, sometimes barefoot. The sun plays the edges of the shadows. The sky is a bold-faced blue freckled with clouds. Thoughts drift in and through.

She considers what it means to end the year without having said goodbye to her students. She probes her own feelings, pokes at soft edges, wonders if there is more sadness than regret. Could she have done more? It doesn't matter. She will not be coming back. Not to this school, perhaps not to any classroom. She is moving on. This is her unceremonious graduation. She'll be attending university in the fall, pursuing her masters (again). When they instilled in her the value of lifelong learning, did they realize she would quit the job to become a student herself?

Now she is on bed rest, another form of meditation, this one far more difficult to find beauty in. She is recovering from the surgical removal of an unwanted piece of flesh. This convalescence is not unlike the experience of waking up the day after her first labour, but without the beautiful new baby to have made the aches worthwhile. She wonders if she should -- if she's allowed to shower. She has the time.

She looks around the room knowing that she must accept, for now, its clutter. She cannot do laundry, or vacuum, or rearrange shelves and closets. No strenuous activity. No pulling stitches. Just lie here. Just be.

She flips through photos and marvels at the moments of the year. E and M, growing into proper boys; taking swimming lessons and winning sunglasses at the Sidney Elementary Spring Fling; birdwatching on Sundays with Grandpa and Daddy-man, strolling through daisies nearly the height of that little blonde head; Friday dates, just Mommy and E, at the Love Cafe. Q ~ What will you have? A ~ An "I am Blossomed" smoothie to share, 'cause it tastes like banana bread.

And when she looks back, every day was a Friday, with an infinite weekend spreading out before it, all smiles.