When I grow up...

During Opening circle of class, I asked my students what they wanted to be when they grew up. After settling into our normal lopsided circle, I waited patiently for everyone to "think, think, think" about their answer before allowing each student to complete the sentence followed with a short explanation. 

Of course I expected the obvious: a princess, an astronaut, a race car driver. I smiled exuberantly with each response, coaxing a sentence more from each willing to produce it before moving on. After each had spoken, I stood and reached for the day's vocabulary before settling back into my spot on the rug when someone spoke up....

"But teacher, you never said what you wanted to be when you grow up."

In the moment I laughed and explained that I had already grown up and that I was a teacher. But looking back, maybe there was something to what was said. Something more than the pristine view of a six-year-old.

On the drive home I reflected on what I might have said. An astronomer, a volcanologist, a rescue diver...

Never a teacher.

Not that I should be ashamed to have become a teacher, I love what I do. I guess what hit me was more or less my inability to dream for the sake of dreaming. In some ways I haven't lost that talent totally, I don't think I would have come as far in running as I have if I didn't set some lofty goals. 

But those days of standing on the edge of consciousness while discovering a new planet, or fiddling with hot lava in some weird-o suit, or saving an entire crew from a capsized ship off the coast of Alaska are no more. I'm not sure if I could at that time realize those would never happen in this lifetime, but can I remember falling asleep to the idea of what I could do if given the chance. I was invincible! A beast among my wryly counterparts! 

A fearsome thing to behold behind my mane of tangled sun-bleached hair, face swept with the freckles of a thousand lazy summers spent in a tree. 

I was amazing.

So what happened? When did I lose enough faith in humanity to decide that it wasn't worth the hassle anymore, even if only for myself? 

Sitting in traffic, I wonder what I would have said if I had the chance to go back to that moment. 

Would I shout and stomp my feet and fight for the idea that we never grow up? Would I say a teacher, truly? Or would I say something more poignant? Something captivating? Something worthwhile? 

It seems I've forgotten what it means to live a life of any of those things for the time. But how I wish to practice anyhow.... 

Ray LaMontagne - For The Summer

And it begins

Tonight the rain comes.

A familiar voice once lost

to an endless rage.

And with it comes hope

for a renewed sense of self

having been displaced

among the wicked.

The cruel. The apathetic.

In exchange instead

an awakening.

A fierce knowledge of this earth

tethered by its grace.

Allow me then to

drink my fill of those waters

and be born again.