Home again...

Maggie and I are officially the coolest couple ever. She’s a teacher and a student, delightful little closed loop, but there are ONLY SO MANY HOURS IN THE DAY.

She asked me recently why she had to choose between being an elementary school teacher, a middle school councilor, a math specialist and an education specialist. As an exercise in practicality, something I've been working on, I pointed say she only taught the elementary school kids until lunch, she wouldn’t get to the middle school to counsel until 1 or so. Then she’d probably have to run off to her math specialist job by say 2:30, which means by the time she got around to being an educational specialist MOST of the kids would have gone home. Not that that wouldn’t make the job a lot easier, an education specialist who doesn’t have anyone's education to worry about, I just think it’s impractical. Plus it leaves a whole elementary school class just wandering around by itself for an afternoon and THAT is a recipe for trouble.

Anyway, she does both these things, so on Wednesday for example she teaches her class until 3, after school tutors until 4, and then runs off to be a student---I don’t know exactly the hours of this but she returns home around 8. If she has a drug habit, something I fantasize about to make my life more exciting, somewhere in there would be the hours she indulges in it.

That’s fine. As for me, I take Greek or Hebrew MWF, from which I am not home AND free until 2, 2, and 1 respectively. After that it’s the work to make sure I don’t embarrass myself in front of these people who teach me. And then it’s my turn to be a teacher—Literature and English Vocabulary. I am comforted by the fact that my students, at least, will be fine no matter how poorly I advance them in these subjects. Nevertheless.

The point is, thanks to Maggie’s selfishness in her attempt to educate her twenty seven little babies, and the selfishness of people like her all over the educational map, I can’t get any teaching in until five or six because begod the runts are at their own schools. This means I work until 7 or 8.

I know you see where I’m going with this. If our paths do intersect during the week it’s in that lovely hour known as eight, a full hour and a half after what was once known as the witching hour among folks who went to bed a lot earlier than we do. Presumably because they had less websites to visit for the hundredth needless time.

What you don’t know is how we spend that time, and I’ll remedy that lack. Maggie’s a tired gal, she usually gets up around 5:30, a full 13 hours before that time once known as the witching etc. More or less we watch a TV show and she falls asleep on my shoulder.

She’s actually, for my money, the world champion at functioning while actually asleep so it was much to my benefit that I came to recognize the tone of voice which means “I’m talking but nobody’s home”. This kept me from communicating useful information at those times and also cleared the way for a whole host of entertaining one way conversations in which I could reliably depend on semi-appropriate responses.

Don’t get me wrong, I'm also sleepy, but less sleepy, and that makes me look cool, which I appreciate it.

Friday nights are date nights, which we enjoy sincerely, for we have wonderful dates, but on some level I think we both also consider it code for “we’re both pretty tired from the week and wouldn’t mind going to bed early. Let’s not let anyone else into our party who might try to make us do anything fun past, say 10:30”

Saturdays are usually normal days for normal youths! Are we youths?

And then Sunday is getting ready for Monday.

So to sum up, Maggie and I are the coolest.

Fall lingering in the edges of the sky now. I’ll be honest, I always thought of the sky as a kind of giant blue sheet, hiding God’s fort which looks pretty much like the ones we used to arrange out of chairs and sheets ourselves, in the living room. But when the seasons change I think they diffuse from around the sheet's corners, sent up to the majors, and I can feel it, when the evenings starts to dissolve rather than disappear. I think Samuel Beckett called it Echo’s Bones, referring to the nymph who slowly disappeared until nothing remained but her voice. Fall could do worse than be a voice bouncing through emptiness, it would make time seem purposeful.

It is purposeful, I’m sure, though it doesn't bother me either way. And yet I find myself against odds not more than a little worried about the future. Between you and me whenever they ask me what I’m going to be when I grow up, and I do have a pretty good answer these days, I still feel like I already am it only with so much to learn that has nothing to do with academics. Maybe if they phrased the question differently, I would feel the anxiety I need to.

Do you know what I mean? Hats are accessories, you put them on to make you look better, not because you’re to become all hat.

The sky seems so much bigger as the hands close around it.