A Turning
Summer's end, another school start, a deep breath and a plunge
I’ve always loved new school supplies. Shiny yellow pencils, bright and pointed. Unblemished pink erasers that smell chalky-soapy. Smooth topped vibrant waxy crayons, their kaleidoscope colors wrapped in matching paper. Pristine notebooks with beautiful white pages. A pile of these items makes me happy. They portend promise and opportunity, of what could be.
Near the end of August, before the first day of school, the kids and I went to school for school supply drop-off. It sounds informal, and it is, but it is also a moment of reintroduction. Kids cart in packages of paper, binders, notebooks, pencils, and other materials from their backpacks. They walk down clean hallways and enter classrooms ready to welcome them again. The younger ones get measured for desk heights, the olders get lockers. They talk to their teachers and laugh with some friends they haven’t seen for a while. They put items where they go, like two gleaming pencils in the shallow niches just inside their desks, or flat, unmarked notebooks in baskets labeled with their names written in calligraphy. By carting some basic items to school, by finding their backpack hooks, they begin to acclimate back to a routine that is familiar.
For us, and I think for most families, school routine provides a healthy ordering. It structures our time toward goodness, truth, and beauty as found in Christ and His many and varied blessings, wrapped in a familiar disciple that we need. That familiarity is a gift. As I visited with teachers, making notes about kid growth and chatting about the last days of summer, and then did some more sorting and dusting and clearing in the school library, I felt the blessing of order and planning, of an edifying return to a school year both recognizable and full of unknown possibility. It was promising. We were ready to do this all again.
And yet, when we left and went outside the school into the hot August sun, the Wyoming wind sustained and choked with dust, I felt a strong urge to get to water. Let’s go swimming, I thought. I’d wanted to that week and had even planned it in our family calendar for a few days later. But the sense was nearly overwhelming. Let’s go swimming today.
I’m not one for last-minute plans, but I’ve learned to give into them sometimes. This was one of those times. My daughter wanted to call a friend’s mom to see if S could come. This mom is wonderful at embracing moments when they arise, so I didn’t feel awkward about springing the plan on her an hour before we wanted to leave. And all three of her kids could go! After a quick lunch and loading towels and water bottles and snacks and kids into the van, off we went.
Almost no one was at the state park. Rumbling school buses and distant shouts from the local playground during recess, and much quieter streets, had replaced summer outings for most of our neighbor kids. They were already back to school. But there we were, the only vehicle in the parking area. And ten kids and me, walking parched, scorched, and squinty across the vast, groomed, brown gravel-sandy beach toward the river-fed pond, the sun blazingly bright. Our voices were loud to beat out the wind. No one was within a quarter mile of us, and very few beyond that. We were giddy with joy at being outside and being alive.
We dropped our things on and around a picnic table near the shoreline. Next to it, I set my fold-out chair and the sleeping baby in his car seat on the sand in the shade of a lone tree. I watched, amused, as the kids ventured into the pond. The water was cold—bitingly so. The kids grimaced and howled and slowly crept deeper into the water. They teased each other. “You can’t do it!” One by one they girded themselves and went underwater.
The older four kids swam across the pond. S left her life jacket on the beach across the way as they wandered the opposite shore the way older kids do. S’s sister wanted to use the jacket. So the younger kids and I waved and they waved, but they didn’t hear us as we asked them to bring it back. I felt a rush of excitement. I looked at the baby, his face relaxed in repose, his relaxed form shaded by the seat’s visor and the waving leaves above him. “I’ll swim across and get it,” I told the younger kids.
Yes, the water was cold. Well-nigh glacial. A quick freeze at contact, then tingling. I gasped and tried to ease into it. I made it up to my waist and then needed help. “Count one-two-three-go, please!” The kids grinned and yelled the countdown, and I pushed into a stroke.
So cold! My body below my neck was numb. Right, left, right, left. Kick, kick, kick, kick. After going for a few seconds, I didn’t feel the temperature so much. Smooth, blissful moisture, the water dark below the bright sky. I kept my head above water, occasionally looking ahead. The small waves blew me toward my goal, but it didn’t feel like I was making much progress. That’s how it goes. I concentrated on moving. It wasn’t long before I was breathing hard. I switched strokes and kept going.
Pretty soon the bank was close enough to see clearly. I kept swimming until I knew I could stand easily, then walked up out of the pond to grab the life jacket. Now the unrelenting hot wind felt refreshing on my soaked body. I was still trying to catch my breath as I turned back toward the kids. They waved and cheered with glee. Then they yelled something. Was it about the van? They tried again, and then again. “Take a rest,” I finally heard above the roar. I waved again and held up the jacket. I’d have help coming back.
This time the wind was in my face, the countless little waves blowing spray into my eyes. I closed them, feeling the burning sun and air beat down on me while light drizzle periodically relieved the heat on my head. My body was blissfully cool as I paddled slowly toward the shore. Every once in a while, I’d peek to make sure I was heading mostly straight to the kids.
There are few moments when I am alone and truly incapable, if only for a few minutes, of being reached by another human being. Swimming in the pond was one of them. The high arch of the blue sky overhead, the dry brown expanse of sand before the parched grasses, the lapping refreshing feel of the water—below the roar of the blast, one ear in the water, I could hear my heart beat. I felt calm and at peace. This was why I’d wanted to come.
In recent years, right before school begins again, I feel a bittersweet urge to embrace the unplanned, to escape from something that hasn’t started yet. We are in so many stages at once here, from precious baby time all the way through to a rising senior still figuring out what he will do next. Our three-year-old will soon be four, and we’ve started doing junior kindergarten at home. We have a daughter starting a ballet class, a critical mass of kids studying violin and other instruments in lessons, and several sons in two catechism classes in preparation for confirmation. We’ve got a cross-country runner with new braces on her teeth. These don’t count all the other rolling activities and sports and assignments and conversations and growth that will happen this school year. It can be impossible to keep track of everyone and everything.
Our lanky, sometimes moody freshman felt this impending load. He’d actually fought me on the beach trip, at first insisting he’d rather stay home. “You’ve been home for days,” I told him, “and you’re bored. You need to be outside.” He backed down, and finally he admitted that he was angry at being placed in a more difficult literature class than he wanted. I know how he feels. Sometimes, it can just be hard to head into the next huge thing. It’s the challenge of the unavoidable task that seems daunting and more than what you can handle. You can want to escape, yearning to weasel out of the difficulty. Or maybe just evade the pain.
Or you can want to sleep. The baby had had croup earlier in the week, along with a few kids with colds. He’s just getting to the point where he is close to sleeping through the night, and I’d started feeling the need to move him out of our room. After multiple nights of newborn-stage-type wakeups plus steamy shower visits, I was bleary with fatigue. I’ve learned by now not to think too much about the sleep deprivation, because that’s just more energy that I don’t want to spend. But nevertheless, I was pretty exhausted. This made it hard, or maybe harder than usual, to gird myself for the busy school year that’s ahead. It’s a plunge that can feel like a drowning, at least at the beginning.
And that was why I needed a beach day. Floating on the water, my thoughts roaming aimlessly, I was viscerally reminded of how all of us need time to be outside, in our world, to bring our bodies to the pace of nature. The water lapped, featherlike and steady, in the breeze. This too shall pass, said the wind. The sweltering August sun, drying us ridiculously fast in its heat, held a note of cool behind it, a promise of change. Soon, soon the autumn comes.
I think what I really love about school supplies is their cleanliness. There are no mistakes, no messes. No work. But this is just an illusion of perfection. Erasers are erasers, crayons are crayons, things are things. They are helpful to certain ends, but they are not the ends themselves. The things that matter are not unused pencils and unmarked, unrumpled papers, empty and pristine. The things that matter are what come out of them, the thoughts and souls that move the hands that drive the pencils, that work the erasers, that scribble the crayons. The things that matter are the things that leave marks.
And marks are messy. We are three weeks into school now, and the beach day feels like a distant memory. I’m back into the juggle of schedules and cleaning and managing both full, predictable days and the inevitable snafus that make up normal life. The lost binder. The missing socks. The forgotten memory work, faces screwed up in concentration. The van that needed to go back and forth to the shop, requiring logistical limbo more times than I can count, to get that air conditioning fixed. One day can feel like ten. It is hard, very hard.
And the very fullness runs over, like a cup, like a stream. The formal beginning of autumn is days away, blowing in yet again on strong winds. We pulled out the autumn books which we love and started rereading them. We’ve celebrated great math tests and interesting literature, new-to-us music and special time with friends. We’ve looked at properties for family here, and they are coming. Moving is happening. The cascade of changes can be breathtaking and a shock. They come and keep on coming. We are learning, again. I am learning. And then, with some time, and some wear and tear and mess, the lessons become the learned. Through the work and the testing, we grow stronger and, I nearly always forget, more flexible. The new becomes the familiar, which can ease into the loved. Experience broadens and expands. I am full to breaking, but the fact is that I have not broken. In fact, I am full.
All of this is bittersweet. This, too, shall pass, this stage, this season, this load, these changes. And I can feel myself grasp at the very things that exhaust me, the frenetic schedules, the keeping track and cleaning and doing and going that is so hard, for this work will not last. Just like the shiny pencils will wear down and break, in the very act of making something new, this time will turn. Again, I will have to take a deep breath. I will brace for the shock and the messy splash. I will fall and take the plunge that will become the next regular rhythms of life.
And God refreshes me. He always does.
Behold, I will do a new thing,
Now it shall spring forth;
Shall you not know it?
I will even make a road in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.