Two Years Under My Belt

It was two years ago this very date when I penned my first entry here.  I made the claim at the end that we'd see if something worthwhile emerges from my writing.  I'm still here in spite of my uncertainty back then as to whether I'd keep this up, so something good has come out of this venture - at least for me.  I suppose this is as close to keeping a journal as I'll ever get in that I've written as much about other things going on in my life as I have about scootering.  Yet, for as much as I've written, so much remains hidden.

I suppose that's the way it is with all of us.  We create various stages and on them we act in the persona of one facet of our totality at a time.  Some characters give repeat performances, some emerge only on occasion, and others remain hidden from public view taking the stage only for ourselves or the select few we invite to be in the audience.  I like the Joe who writes this blog, perhaps more than many of the other characters who bear his same name.  This one seems sane, responsible, level-headed, even-keeled, sometimes intelligent, and now and then clever.  Sometimes he reels me in from having to contend with the other Joes who play on my stage.  While I love them all dearly, the others aren't quite as much fun to live with as this one.

This is my last day of school for this academic year.  I should be on top of the world in anticipating the feeling of freedom that awaits me when that last bell rings, but only a small part of me is.  The rest - those other Joes - are too mired in letting go of a great bunch of kids, some of whom I'll never see again, and in sitting vigil, basically awaiting word of the passing away of a gentleman who is, for all intents and purposes, a mere acquaintance, but who holds a very dear place in my heart.  The next few weeks are going to be rough and not as relaxing as I'd prefer them to be, but they're as much a part of real life as the good times so there's little I can do but learn what I can from them as they unfold.

I look forward to the rides I'll take between now and late August - the ones in which I'll rejuvenate my spirit and get it ready to make another batch of kids my own.  I know I won't travel all that far from where I hang my hat each night - that I'll repeat the trips I've taken time and time again over the same, familiar roads, yet the riding I will do will be sweet, and restorative, and will provide opportunity for painful introspection but in good ways.

 

A year in a classroom is a little like a scooter ride - a getting from one point to another at a staid, steady, even pace that doesn't seem to be going very far with any single turn of the wheels, but which carries one a long distance over time.  All too soon I'll be back here lamenting the return to this very classroom that it now grieves me to leave, and in spite of the emotions I'm fighting now while I'm waiting for that last bell to ring, I hope to have the time of my life between now and then even if in doing only simple, plain, ordinary, everyday kinds of things in which much joy can be found if the right Joe is doing them.