A Disappearing Year

Just a few moments ago, sitting by a window in an airport, I saw a shining jet shoot up and disappear in the west, lost among clouds in a few seconds – similar, it seemed, to the just finished school year. The year lasted nine drawn-out months, but looking back, it seemed to blaze into and out of my life as fast as the plane I saw. The days flashed by like those silver wings went up past the window where I am sitting, and the weeks were just small sparkles, here and gone, like the gleams of sunshine on the vanishing plane. Lots happened in the school year, but now, poof, it’s all left behind like the fading sound of the jet. It’s strange, how I took my teaching so seriously, when, in fact, it’s now diminished into nothingness like puffs of wind passing by. My sometimes-showy lesson plans paraded through the days and weeks and then wandered off and are now lost somewhere as summer approaches. The tens of thousands of words my students and I spoke are no more present now than the wisps of clouds the vanishing plane passed through a few moments ago. If this sounds pessimistic, to me it’s just the opposite. Planes fading away in the west mean more planes are free to sail up from the east, and lesson plans giving up the ghost as summer starts simply make way for fresh, new-fangled lessons in the fall. The world everlastingly works from life to death and back to life, and this was the story of the finished school year. It died a peaceable death last week, thus clearing the way for a spanking new one to rise up in September.