Seasons

Brenda and I have greatly reduced our contact with each other.

It's what I want, but it feels, weird.

There isn't anyway for us to fix this mess at this point. Neither of us wants to do so.

Still, after 28 years, it seems wrong to have days go by and we don't speak to each other, don't send or leave messages for each other. As messed up as it was, as masochistic as it sounds, I am missing her, a little sad.

I once saw an amazing sight that remains a clear image in my head today. A tremendous amount of force had been released and pieces of concrete the size of Volkswagons were flung high into the air. My brothers and I stood, mouths agape, as those heavy slabs of man-made rock rose into the blue sky.

Someone yelled "RUN!"

Jarred out of our astonishment, we raced away as hunks of concrete the size of couches slammed into the dirt around us.

My marriage has exploded. It is a time of falling pieces.

I'm 52 years old. I am not ready to think about another relationship, not in any sense. I have much to do with these boys, and much healing to do before I could turn the proper amount of attention to another soul, but the idea of being single is so strange to me I have thought a little about it.

I'm middle aged. That seems pretty late in life.

Of course... there are many new things that happen in middle age. Our solar system is middle aged. There are probably another five billion years left in it before the hydrogen/helium fuel of our sun runs out and it balloons into a red giant growing slightly larger than our world's orbit. Still, many new things can happen on this world in that amount of time.

Our universe is middle aged. Fourteen billion years from now it will have expanded to the point where galaxies will have spread so far apart light won't be able to keep up with the expanding distance... they will disappear from view, and most of their materials will have spiralled into black holes. Still, many new stars will ignite, grow old, and die in that amount of time, especially in the crowded "urban" centers of their galaxies.

I've probably got another three decades or so in me... as much time ahead of me as that which I spent with Brenda.

So, though my children are nearly grown, though I am in mid career and midlife, this can, will be, a time of new beginnings for me.

My garden is winding up for the year. The lettuce and broccoli I haven't eaten is going to seed. The sunflowers are bowing their crowned heads in recognition of their heavy burden, preparing to drop seeds into soil in the chance they might rise again in the Spring.


I have great soil here. I have never fertilized it. But I think I'll get some manure to spread on it for winter, let the richness of decay seep into and revitalize the soil.

Today was the first day with all of the students back in school.

My Computer Lab
(The TV Studio is on the other side of that window at the back)

These first couple of weeks of school is a time of preparation for the learning to come. Classroom policies, setting a tone, mastering the psychology of classes of students, working them into groups that will do more together than any student would learn alone. This is a time of preparing the "soil" of the class, getting it ready for what is to come.

These are patterns familiar to all of us. We are creatures of cycles. We are used to our spinning world turning to and from the sun, bathing us in solar warmth, and the cool light of distant stars each 24 hours. We are used to the the arc of that sun rising higher in Summer and lower in Winter as Earth's dance does its dosado about good ol' Sol.

Like it or not, I am beginning a new cycle.

There is much about this season of my life I am not fond of doing. There are challenges with the boys, and all the regular stuff in parenting and running a household. And I have to button up the projects I have begun.

I am a little resentful of Brenda's "freedom", though I know that it will cost her greatly in the long run. (I believe her relationship with John, begun under such circumstances, fertilized with deception and self centeredness [on both their parts], will not bear healthy fruit. But, that is not my concern any longer.)

Today the boys and I planted tulip bulbs. I talked with them about the process such bulbs undergo. They need to be buried. They need the cold of Winter. All so they recognize the warmth of Spring and grow into something new. We divided the bulbs up, and each of us chose a part of the yard we thought could use a little more color.

I told them it was like this situation we are in. Mom is gone, things are changing. But we are going to start getting ready for new lives. That just as the leaves will drop from the trees, Mom will move her stuff out. Just like we are burying the tulip bulbs, we are going to start burying the way we have done things and let our home settle down for a Winter. And just as those bulbs will make something bright and new in the Spring, our lives will be different, and even better in many ways. For they need to learn how to do the things that will help them grow into young men able to make their way in the world.

Jeremiah

Isaac

I don't like this situation.

I don't want to be thinking about a new Spring, a new beginning.

But what I like, what I prefer, does not change what is.

Isaac just came in with another bowl of strawberries from the garden. He says he wants to freeze them to eat sometime this winter.


Burying, planting, fertilizing, freezing. Packing things up, filling out divorce papers, deciding how to divide old chores in new ways.

Today the students and staff at school were in great humor. We are all hopeful excited. Even the students who have troubled lives have the gleam of hope in their eyes, that this year things may be different. This year they will succeed. And each of us, the teachers, also feel it... this year we will once more improve our lessons, to better encourage, inspire, educate, foster new understanding in our charges.

The positive mood helped me shake off the feeling that my ring finger is naked, that my life is filled with failures, and that I am embarking on a new journey, one I hope will take me to a better place.

It is a season of change.