A Poem About How to End the School Year

June sneaks up on me every year.  Suddenly, we are awash in commencement preparation and moving up ceremonies and awards and prizes and final reports. Cai, finishing first grade, comes to the door of my office for one more hug on the last day of classes. Nora and Indira and their mom present me with a gorgeous orchid.  I find notes on my desk and flowers and a dark green notebook more elegant than I am, embossed with my initials, from a beloved advisee.  We celebrate Green and White Day, our spirit day, on a gorgeous morning, the sky impossibly blue, the heat formidable. Little girls leap and play while this headmistress wilts, revived only by air conditioning. 

Last year, when I thought we still had days and days of school left, my ninth grade English class gleefully chortled that we were down to only three more classes. How did that happen? We were going full tilt and then suddenly we were processing across the finish line–decorous, students walking in and out of the Chapel or Severance Hall or the Conway Pavilion more sedately than they ever walked during the school year.  

My Facebook feed this week is full of the photographs of children on the first day of the year and the last, the first day of Kindergarten and the high school graduation. I forgot to take a first day or last day photo of my son. who is, himself, a recent high school graduate. It is easy for me to forget how much growth happens in a single year for a single child, for each of us. That old adage that it goes so fast feels resonant for me, an almost empty-nester after more than 30 years of every day mothering.

Thursday, after morning meetings, the faculty and staff gathered for our final luncheon.  I love this last luncheon, love seeing the adults assembled, some sitting in friend groups, others bravely sprinkling themselves around the room, across disciplines or grade levels, mingled. It’s a ritual that concludes our year. A period at the end of a sentence. An exhale.

Yesterday marked my 19th lunch as a head of school. We reviewed the year and reflected a bit. I used this list inspired by a NYT article as a prompt and people wrote or doodled at their tables for a few minutes with sharpies on index cards—two items I am never without. We honored those who have served the school for different lengths of time, heard updates from Admissions (good news!) and from Development (more good news!). We bid adieu to colleagues moving on and we gave several prizes for teaching excellence and spirit and going above and beyond. Along the way, we raffled gift cards and begonias and the huge flower arrangement that had adorned the stage at Commencement.  

Then I closed us out, but this year, I did so in collaboration. Earlier in the week, feeling like to the Little Engine that Could, I emailed with my pal, Nancy, who also leads a school.  We were both seeking end of year inspiration—a poem, a quotation—something to offer our faculty and staff as a gift at the year’s close.  I jotted some ideas and shared them with her. She took what I had written and made it better.  I edited my own version for my school; she shared her version with her school.  Collaborating with a friend about how to end the year made me feel as if we were holding hands–all the way from Maryland to Ohio.  I loved that we were leading meetings on the same day in our respective schools, acknowledging our faculty and staff’s commitment to the children in our care.  Her community loved it–I hope mine did, too.  

Here is my version of our effort: 

A Poem About How to End the Year

I google how to end the school year with inspiration—

Conscious that teachers end the year twice–

June and December. 

At the end of the school year, we 

Celebrate, mourn a little.

Clichés abound.

We say goodbye to children who have grown in our care—

Wildflowers, hothouse flowers, weeds.

They all get taller—mostly—some spindly, some robust.

Some break old patterns and finally learn

How to put a comma after an introductory dependent clause,

Or have a breakthrough in algebra,

Or get braver speaking Spanish.

And some still don’t remember to hold onto work we’ve turned back.

Or read the comments we offered--

On their essays and problem sets and projects.

Feedback is love, right?

But fertilizer, I remember, 

Thinking about flowers,

Is a kind of nourishment plants need, 

But often smells foul. 

Not everything that is good for us is pleasing.

Feedback or fertilizer.

The thing about our garden

Is that it is always thirsty.

If I don’t remember to water, morning and night,

Plants wilt--

Like all of us at the end of a long week and now.

Love is care and rain, which we haven’t had enough of—

And sunshine—which has been, perhaps, too plentiful.

I love the bright days, but the grass does not.

Love is 46 seniors crossing the stage,

A note from a grateful parent,

Acknowledgment from a colleague.

While I’m not looking, it seems, a nasty groundcover springs up overnight,

In my garden–

Voracious, tentacled,

And threatens to choke my little seedlings.

I started them in February in tiny peat pots on the windowsill.

I thought they were ready to go outside before Mother’s Day,

But I lost my nasturtiums because it was still too cold.

I miscalculated.

We do that–teachers, parents, friends.

We do not always get it right or know what’s best.

But we rarely give up.

We keep trying, keep investing in hope

And color

And scent

And mulch.

We dwell in what Emily Dickinson called possibility.

I imagine the garden I hope to have someday—beds full of

larkspur and stock and snapdragons

In lavenders and pinks and blues–

Vivid, fragrant, plentiful,

Calling me to make bouquets

I have the peonies, but the heat has knocked

Their heads down,

Petals drooping, kissing the dry earth.

The flowers at the farmer’s market

stand in for my would-be garden.

Gardens, my best friend and I say to one another,

are life-long projects.

Cultivation takes work and care.

We always imagine we will do more than we can.

There is never enough time.

The weather is unpredictable.

We don’t always know which plants will thrive or wither.

Gardens.  School.

We are, all of us, always growing,   Grateful.

Happy summer!