An impertinent title that has nothing to do with the entry that follows

Yesterday evening was the last Band at the Beach performance of the year and to keep my sanity, I had to remind myself several hundred times that just because September is here and school is back, and it gets dark way too early, Summer is not technically over yet. People can rave about the beauty of Autumn, and how Winter probably has the best holidays, and hurrah for lusty scarf and hot chocolate days; and I know the wildflowers bloom in Spring, and there is certainly something mysterious and lovely in the changing of the seasons, but nobody could ever convince me that Summer isn’t the most inspiring, joy-inducing, wonderful season of them all. Summer is the barefoot, free-spirited, sunshine, fresh-cut-grass Queen of the Year and I love her. And so, after her three months fly by, it is always hard for me to let her go. As an homage to Summer, I made a list of some reasons why:

• Bare feet in the warm sand is the simplest form of happiness.
• Flip flops, and sweet tea, and fruit smoothies, and sunbathing, and the windows down.
• Long days.
• Summer memories.
• The ocean. And ocean water, the best skin-toner and hair-shiner I have ever found.
• Blissfully warm toes. (From approximately late September until late May, my feet are in a perpetual state of coldness. In the Summer, they come out from their wool sock wrappings and layers of blankets and, for three fleeting months, are warm again.)
• Humidity.
• Fireflies.
• Homegrown tomatoes.
• Fresh berries. (And fresh berry cobbler).
• Bonfires.

So back to Band at the Beach, yesterday evening, and the Elm Streetband playing songs like “Summer of ’69,” and “Brown-eyed Girl,” and “Hotel California.” We were sipping wine and snacking and looking out at the ocean and the palm trees and the American flag at the foot of the pier, and watching the day turn to dusk and loving life. It got me thinking about one of my favorite Ty Herndon songs where he says, “Tell me something, who could ask for more / than to be living in a moment you would die for.”

I had just spent the day poring over my CSET study materials at the bookstore. Too much air-conditioning, too much sitting still, too much eye strain, too much stress (I really am stressing out a lot about this exam). And the only thing that kept me at it so diligently was the knowledge that I’d spend the evening draped on a blanket at the beach, listening to good music, sipping wine with some of my favorite people, at one of my favorite places in all the world. And sitting there, in a moment that represented all the things I value most, a moment “I would die for,” unwinding, I got that sense of satisfied exhaustion that the best little and big events of life bring me.

I think it’s that exhaustion that makes the memories. That moment after the Moment (or sometimes during) where you contemplate it, let it sink in, and truly realize how good it made you feel. It comes in all forms in life: physical, emotional, intellectual, perhaps even spiritual. It seems to me that some of the best feelings in life come in these still moments of exhaustion: the times that I feel healthiest, and happiest, and strongest, and most secure and certain, when my perspective is the clearest.

There are times, after a good run, after I’ve worked the kinks out of my legs and my breath is coming a little easier, that I lay flat on my back on the driveway, against concrete warm from the day, and look up at the sky, usually sprinkled with a few stars or Venus or the moon – and this is going to sound really new age and hippie and maybe a little creepy, but I can feel the Earth working. I can feel the natural world moving and growing and struggling, I can feel peace and war, and I can feel the skeleton of the world, the rocks and mountains and minerals, solid and strong. I can feel God. And sometimes, I even catch little glimpses of my place in the scheme of it. My blood is flowing and my skin is glowing from the run and my body’s exhausted and somehow my brain is clearer and I feel healthy and strong in body and mind and I am totally grounded.

The same thing happens when I spend a day in the ocean. My irrational fear of crabs aside, I love everything about the seashore. They say if you are born by the ocean it is in your blood and I believe it. One time, I went surfing. For a little while I floated on my stomach on the board over and between the waves, getting the feel of the board and the tide. My confidence mounting, and Jason instructing me from the water, I decided to ride a wave, just on my stomach, nothing heroic. I picked the wrong wave. An experienced surfer might have been able to ride it, but probably wouldn’t have bothered. It wasn’t the type of wave that carries you gracefully toward shore. It was that temperamental, ornery sort that slaps hard against you and tumbles you under. I didn’t know it was the wrong wave until it was on me. I watched Jason’s face turn from focused attentiveness to a look of concern. Then he yelled something un-encouraging. The look on his face, his response to my completely hopeless situation was too much for me. I went under laughing. Laughing is all well and wonderful, but it doesn’t give you much of a chance to hold your breath. I came up scraped, bruised, choking…and laughing. I couldn’t get his face out of my head. I left the beach scraped, bruised, breathless, laughing, and tired. Salty, water-logged, and exhausted, that is the only healthy way to leave the sand. A run, a swim, going on a walk with an over-exuberant dog, a long hike, horseback riding, they all bring on the physical version of this exhaustion I’m talking about.

But there are other kinds. For a couple years, I worked at an elementary school in downtown Long Beach as a teacher’s aid. One of my favorite things that I’ve ever done in my life. I generally worked with kids in small groups or one-one-one and helped them with everything from reading (my favorite!) to math. Some of them had actual behavioral issues (products of drug-using parents and stuff like that), some were just too young (six is way too immature for the valuable knowledge you are expected to gain in first grade), nearly all of them lacked basic manners. I spent less time teaching kids the alphabet than I did teaching them how to sit still long enough to hear it recited. If I had thirty minutes to spend with a small group, I could expect that at least fifteen of them would be spent getting them to keep their feet off the table and their hands to themselves, and at least five of them would be spent at the end getting them to line up in a quiet row to leave. That left ten minutes to teach five struggling children to read Is Your Mama a Llama? (Or, as one of my favorite students, Geraldo, insisted on calling it, “Is Tu Mama a Wama?”)

So on group days, I would start by going through my rules. Now I’m a rather organic person – the type who gets uncomfortable around Bonsai Trees and has some new-fangled notions on how children should be treated – so it took me perhaps longer than most to realize how important these rules were. As a compromise between upholding my beliefs and maintaining my sanity, I kept my rules simple and few, but I stressed to the kids that they were critically important.

One typical day, Louisa came in “tattling” about how Louis, who I had already observed had an obvious head-over-heels crush on her, had called her a despicable name. I looked over at Louis, one of those students who just breaks your heart because he is so smart and capable and so much stubborn trouble, and he was making an obscene face at Louisa and her voice was getting louder and louder in complaint. I knew there was no way for me to win because everyone was fully prepared to deny everything against them and claim unbridled innocence, so I did the only thing a good teacher can do. I copped out. Looking at Louisa, I asked, “What is my number one rule?” She rolled her eyes and recited it, Louis mouthing insolently along with her, “always be nice.”

I’ll be honest, I wish it were more pithy. I love words and something like, “To err on the side of kindness is seldom an error,” or “The kindest word in all the world is the unkind word, unsaid” would have made me feel much better, but I’ve learned that witty anecdotes are unappreciated by most first graders (although it is delightful to talk to those ones who understand them), so the rule was just “be nice.” Be nice because I don’t want to referee between you. Be nice because we have a hard book to read today and there’s no time to argue. Be nice because I abhor meanness, especially when it is petty. Be nice because you will need it later – because the more difficult your life is and the more un-niceness you encounter, the more you will require it. Be nice because there is too little of it in the world. Be nice because, more than you know, even more than I can understand, I want you, sassy Louisa and stubborn Louis, to be twenty five years old and kind.

With kids, you can’t ever only be paying half attention, not only because you will find, when you turn around, that they have slingshotted all your erasers around the room and stuck pencils to the ceiling, but also because you will find that the moment your mind wanders just the littlest bit, to lunch, or the errands you still need to run, or that story you’ve been working on, they will hit you with a question so poignant and relevant that the entire universe stands still to carefully await your response. (And trust me, there is nothing like the pressure of knowing the entire universe is awaiting your response to leave you tongue tied, unless it is a small earnest first grader staring you intently in the face). Better yet, they will tell you a story.

“My brother came home yesterday,” Christopher, aged five, told me as we sat at a table in the back of the class with a book opened in front of us. “Really, from where?” I asked naively. “They got him in jail,” he told me, unabashed. “The police came and they put handcuffs on him, but he’s back now with his girlfriend.” His unhesitating words were accompanied by hand gestures and there was no chance for me to be embarrassed by my question for the earnestness of his response. Besides, I was busy trying to come up with a smooth way to transition from criminal family members to rhyming words. I could practically hear the universe snickering at me.

I only worked short five or six hour shifts three days a week at the elementary school, but those hours left me drained. The hours I spent, and spend, thinking about those kids: the things they said, the ways I wanted to treat them, what I hoped they would learn from me, and what I had learned from them, far surpassed the time I spent in their presence. It made me laugh and cry, it inspired me, it made me think, it left me exhausted.

You know what I think it is? It is an exhaustion borne of an utter lack of apathy. As an aside, I will tell you that I abhor apathy. I think it is a despicable quality, particularly for a race of animals that is supposed to be self-conscious and aware. You can disagree with me, you can be uninformed, or unintelligent, or aggravating in a hundred other ways, but you only really become worthless when you become apathetic. Those moments of healthy exhaustion grow, I think, from caring. From working your body or your brain or exercising your emotions. From feeling. This is the kind of exhaustion that I hope for in life. There is a quote from Albert Schweitzer that plays through my mind at both my most and least ambitious moments: “The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.” And so, I think, these moments of exhaustion are, ironically, our chances to become renewed and re-inspired, to last another day, another hundred days, another hundred years. For me, a day well spent, a successful day, is one that ends in utter exhaustion. The invigorating exhaustion of knowing that you cared, that you gave it all you had, that you took as little as possible fore granted, that the joyful awareness of this Moment is a happiness that you have earned.

-R.E.A.