With another whirlwind year whooshed away, I’m settling into the quiet darkness that accompanies the start of summer vacation. I sleep a lot and try to shake the stress. It’s like sloshing water in a bathtub. Big swell, ebb, big swell, ebb. Except mostly there is not much ebb. Even my sleep is difficult. I wake up tense, body aching, heart racing. I have nightmares. The phone woke me up this morning from a dream, and I didn’t realize it had been a dream until I started talking to the person on the other end of the line. The sleep and the waking overlapped for a moment, and once I realized I had been in fact dreaming, I thanked the caller for saving me from the horror of having shown up to work naked and going the entire day without anyone saying anything and me not doing anything about the nakedness. I was overwhelmed with humiliation when the phone rang. The depth of relief that I hadn’t actually ruined my life is something I cannot convey.
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I am obligated to read a book this summer, but I should not make that book be the one I set out to read months (months?) ago. I need an escape. I will read the first one because I said I would. But I will read another for an even better reason.
The last day of school, I held class in the library so the students could take their final exam on the computers. Once finished, the students spread out in the lounging area and at the tables and waited for the bell to usher in summer vacation. One of the students looked back at me and commented that he was bored and had nothing interesting to do. I looked at him quizzically, lifted a brow, and told him to look around. “We’re surrounded by books,” I said. “Everything you could want to do and more is in this room.” He scoffed. I took the challenge and sought out Fahrenheit 451. “It was a pleasure to burn.” Surely that would catch his eye. But no, they all read it in English class and were not interested. I tried again, and returned to the table with The Call of the Wild. He read a little and flipped the pages. “This is about a dog?” he asked. “And wolves,” I replied. “It’s a brutal book.” He set it down and the person next to him picked it up. I pretended not to pay attention as I watched the second kid out of the corner of my eye. He smiled and said he didn’t have the attention span for it. I told him that scrolling social media does that to a person, me included, and that he needs to push through the distraction because depriving himself of reading books is one of the greatest disservices he can do to himself. He paused. “You know what, Mrs. M-? I am going to read a book this summer in honor of you.” I told him I would do the same for him. So I, myself, am now bound to push aside the distractions and enjoy a book.
So that’s my world lately, along with a few other things that I’ll save for another post.
Another Writer, Another Blog 