It really seems as if I'll either soon find my voice or everything will remain in silence. 

The quiet is starting to feel as natural as the sound used to.

I was looking in on friend MJ's weblog today and her entry about Teachers' Day and the pleasure she finds in her profession reminded me of something I learned about five years ago, not as a student, and not directly from a teacher, but a very important thing I'd not learned before.

One day as I waited for my little charges, I saw a poster in the school hallway.  The poster was in the part of the building where students who have trouble learning went for special help, and to help those children who don't seem to "get" them,  the poster listed the steps to learning. 

The first steps were familiar to me:  preview  the material, , divide the assignment into manageable steps, etc., etc., right through to "Check your work".  Then came another step, one I'd never considered before, and one that I will never forget.  I've tried to practice it, and to  teach my own children to do this step also;  it applies to many things besides learning. 

The final step was:

The morning I woke up to today is just like the morning I woke up to yesterday:

Gray.  Cold.  Raining ever so often.

Ah!  Just the kind of morning I like at this time of year!

And Friday, too.

Things are looking mighty fine indeed.

It's my birthday.  As the day has moved up, inexorably, much faster than it used to when becoming a year older landed me in a better position in life; a later bedtime or driver's license, I've thought about last year's birthday and about the resolution I made.  This is what I wrote 365 days of life ago:

If a person’s view of the world is represented by a pie graph, a young person’s graph will show a very large proportion of dreams and a small slice of reality.  A more mature person’s pie will have the opposite, nearly all of it will be reality and the piece representing dreams will be a very narrow sliver, if there are any dreams at all left to show.fficeffice" />

 

This year I’m going to work on that pie of mine.  I am going to spend more time dreaming and hoping and less time reviewing reality.  I don’t use recipes very much anymore, I’ve cooked and baked enough to know my way around a thanksgiving dinner or a simple pie, but I’m using a recipe for this project.  The recipe prescribes a time needed to prepare a pie worth having, and I’m going to spend that amount of time each day on it, and adjust the minutes upwards until I have something I relish instead of a flavorless portion that’s gone stale.

 

And here it is a year later.  How did I do?

I'd have to say that I did dream more this year; the future was hazier, but much more compelling than it had been.  As my spirit was freed, the practicalities of life, which have been more difficult to handle than they've ever been before, had less power to hobble me.  I've enjoyed the world more than when I didn't take the time to waste time, to while away time, to wonder and wander away time.

And so it's been a very wonderful year, one of the best of my life.  But there are bruises that weren't there before too.  Dreams can float us high enough that landing square on reality is jarring.

I find myself feeling ambivalent this birthday.  The past year changed my life;  what will it look like when it settles?  No, that's if I let it settle, let me settle, let me be set, instead of being willing to be carried somewhere else in dreams.

If ever you lose sight of how accomplished a human being you are

or how complex the business of being an adult human being is,  I hope that you have the opportunity to watch a fledgling adult navigate new independence.  Things that you and I now do without deliberate thought, without uncertainty, required us, when we were fledglings, to feel our way and take chances, hoping that we were doing the right thing.  It was time to take care of ourselves and the experience was new and a bit scary, and very, very rewarding.

Jean the Fledgling is doing very well in the tricky business of adult living.

(And part of being an adult is knowing to ask another adult for help, when you really do need it.)

I've taken a couple of days off of work while Eric borrows my car.  I could have gotten a ride from someone else, but as I looked at the Friday and Monday on the calendar they seduced me, with their promises of a quiet house and long weekend.  I'm easily seduced;  who knew?

So, I'm home today and feeling happy at the time off out of all proportion to the actual number of minutes being spent on things like writing posts instead of on supervising my dear little chick-lets.  I wondered why my reaction is so big when the length of my workday is so very short and of course it's because it's not the length of it, but the intensity of it and the number of people in it that is the challenge.

It's a beautiful day too; it wouldn't be so bad to be out in the sunshine and fresh air.  I'm going to experience it without my walkie-talkie and whistle, and without four square disputes to settle.  Oh, and without tears and scraped up skin, theirs or mine, or catching a football to the back of the head.

And without tattle-tales.  No one walking up the big twirly slide either, and...

Oh yeah.  I've taken the day off.