Senior Moments: In the Garden

Today, I would see, at different times, Ann out in the garden, sitting under the apple tree, or on the deck of the playhouse, later on over on the swing seat under the rose arbor. 

It was as beautiful a day as San Francisco gets here in September, that point of the year that really marks the beginning of our summer. 

The playhouse is where she played as a young girl in the Eden of her childhood here in the same garden eighty years ago. The roses on the arbor were planted by her father, who was famous throughout the neighborhood for his roses. Sitting in the garden, on such a day, who could not feel grateful for all your life has given you the chance to see and do.

Looking up at the house, she might have glanced her granddaughter Nora playing dolls with her friend Audrey, both girls the same age Ann was when she did the same so long ago in the playhouse.

Senior students, our Whitman included, rarely understand that they live in the garden of their youth, wherein so much is provided, things they take so for granted that they can not even fathom life without them. 

Outside the garden, there lies a world all these students and my own son must learn to make their way through, to arrive at the other side, where they can, as Ann did today, sit in the garden, at peace, looking at the children of their children at play under a sky the same color as those of their own childhood so many years ago yet which the memory calls up with an ease and clarity that never ceases to amaze me.

Comments

[Abraham Ovalles]

I really loved this post! It captured the essence of what all of us eventually go through, the truth which I am going through at this present moment. I am the first out of eight children in my family to graduate high school and now in my senior year at NYU, I am close to another milestone that marks my growth and progression through the world. The journey is never over, every moment in life is an obstacle whether good or bad. But the best key to survive is having perseverance. This is what I want to teach my future students. To persevere in this world and become someone significant in life.

Burke, I just wanted to add that I think you are great and I am reading The English Teacher's Companion in one of my classes and I thank you for all of the great advice that you included in your book.