And just that fast, another year of school days, endless weeks of wind, and many months of puppy barks, cottonwoods, knocking pipes, thunderstorms, and irrepressible life slowly closes.
I love them, and I will see them next August, all of them taller, grown, with more limbs, and fewer teeth.
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I am a person who believes everything happens for a reason, who sees potential meaning everywhere, and who – fallible, exuberant, and generally sleepy – often extracts the wrong meaning.
Lucky for me, when you believe everything happens for a reason, erroneous choices and difficult decisions are less mistakes than they are lessons, opportunities, possibilities, and bright, orange fires to jump and come through singed, but definitely new.
If you listen, you know what to do and when to do it, it is in your guts and your soul and your sunny yellow peace of mind.
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“My book is about New York city and going back in time. New York is full of people and cars. Than 350 years before all that people speak different languages. And 15,000 years before, Mammoths, foxes, and snow rabbets. Before mamoths and others we went back 190 million years where dinosaurs take over the land. And 540 millions years before all that, other stuff, nothing but rocks and algae as far as the eye can see . . .”
That right there, my friends, is a deep and significant excerpt from a 5th grade boy’s book report. This same boy – smart, funny, quick at math – once misspelled “everybody” on a spelling test, giving it an original and profound new spelling as “every buddy” . . . yes, we are all buddies here.
We move through this life together sometimes and apart at others, crossing paths, connecting, and speaking to one another in a land that started with rocks and algae as far as the eye can see.
. . . How far we’ve come!
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The 4th and 5th grade class of St. Joseph Mission School with Jay on the last day of school, 2012. The chalkboard says, “Thank you for being our teacher.”
We move on. Jay is moving on! . . . He doesn’t know where yet, but needless to say, every buddy will miss him, myself probably most of all.
St. Joseph’s will never be the same without him, his students are no longer the same because of him, nor will I be the same and am I the same. But now we are we because of him, and whether he goes to Gallup or Long Island, stays in Cubero or Maine, there is a strong, solid, witty man heading to shake things up in the most responsible, diligent, and good-hearted way possible. He will always be a teacher, perhaps just not in a classroom.
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Upwards and onwards. Be well. I love all of you and do not see you nearly enough.
– SAWK
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