Marriages are amazing contraptions. Sometimes humming along, sometimes rattling through, occasionally soaring over; staying the same, in a way, but also ever-changing, like the clouds in an autumn sky at the end of a day.
Nobody said anything about my absence last Saturday up at the annual Convention for New Hampshire Episcopalians, but still I felt some pangs about not being courtside—no, wait, I mean in the conference room—while my husband gave his address. I bet it was a really good one, and I’m eager to read it just as soon as possible.
It was chilly in Waterville Valley as last Saturday dawned.
Last time I was there, to go skiing with girls and mentors from the Circle Program, there was supposed to be snow on the ground. But in early November? Naaaah. Still, having the Convention in this spot was definitely a smart move; people from the North Country churches really felt recognized.
What I was recognizing, at the same exact time, was the amount of grading I still had to do in order to meet the first semester deadline on Monday night. Being new to this particular job, I have had to concentrate so much on class preparation over the past couple of months, that the work turned in by over 100 students in five classes (mostly in that oft-used “Classroom” computer site) has had a surreptitious quality of mounting up. No surprise there.
“Surreptitious” — now that would be a good vocabulary word. So far, I’ve been eschewing word lists targeted to 11th graders and just plucking worthy ones from what we’re reading. Here’s a batch.
These all come from one author, one book…THE SCARLET LETTER, by this stern-looking guy.
Not the kind of dude teenagers would most likely choose to hang out with, but in fact many of them are drawn into his tale almost in spite of themselves. How much do we blame Hester, anyway, for not being true to ol’ Chillingworth, whom she never loved to begin with? And what about Dimmesdale with his “tremulous” voice, racked with guilt? And Pearl, the elfish embodiment of passion? Maybe everything is not quite black and white here.
During a quick dash into a bookstore the other day, I was greeted with this sign.
Ah, Hawthorne, not to worry! Trending is over-rated anyhow. Hey, wait a minute, are those roses on the cover of that new book? You had those first, right outside the prison door from which Hester emerges. And, come to think of it, I have a hunch that what the New Hampshire Episcopalians are working hard to protect and nurture— pockets of community, ways of reaching out to neighbors in need, spiritual growth — those things are not necessarily trending either. But they’re real all right.
Before we embarked upon the classic novel featuring that Red A, I had the students spend a few days on “To Autumn” by John Keats. In truth, this was partly because I felt so knocked out by the beauty of the season — coming home every day to our back field full of reds and golds and white birches; our garden bursting with eggplants– I had to find something to illustrate it in class. English teacher prerogative, I guess.
When I found this illustration of the personified Autumn, from an English teacher’s blog, actually (https://englishwithasmile.org/2015/11/10/poetry-line-to-line-reading-to-autumn-by-john-keats) I couldn’t help wondering what life would be like being so completely relaxed. Must be hired hands do all the harvesting. And clearly, she has no papers to grade.
Dressed like this, she definitely would have been chilly up in Waterville last Saturday; didn’t even try to rouse herself for that, I’ll bet. So as my mother used to say, “We each do our different things.”
I’m a pastor’s wife, a back field appreciator, a dog caregiver, a mother of three young adults, a sister, a daughter of parents now gone, a friend, and a teacher — in no particular order. I feel twinges of being unconventional; but mostly nothing much out of the ordinary here.