And School Starts ...

I have to confess that I feel a little ... weird ... this time of year. For most of my life, when the last day lily croaked, when the sky darkened earlier in the evening, when the Browns and Indians were playing at the same time, it was Back-to-School Time for me.

I entered kindergarten in the fall of 1950. Graduated from high school in the spring of 1962. From college in the spring of 1966. So ... for sixteen consecutive years I was heading off the school in late summer to sit in class and daydr--uh, learn.

And then in the fall of 1966, I headed off to school again, this time as a rookie middle-school English teacher (Grade 7; Aurora Middle School; Aurora, Ohio). And I would continue doing so for thirty more years, retiring in January 1997.

I had not spent all that time in Aurora. One year Joyce and I taught at Lake Forest College in Illinois (1978-79), then two years at Western Reserve Academy (1979-81: I quit in a salary snit; Joyce stayed till 1990); then a year of teaching frosh English at KSU (+ working in a bookstore); then--in the fall of 1982 I started again in Aurora (this time with 8th graders) and stayed until my retirement.

During all those teaching years, I did have a couple of sabbatical years--one leave-of-absence (two were grad-school related, another was to accommodate my Jack London research)--but when you know you're going back to teach, a sabbatical year almost seems like an extended summer vacation (one that features some snow) rather than, you know, The End.

After I retired from Aurora, I still taught in Hiram's Weekend College for a bit ... then ... I shut it down in, oh, about 1999. Two years later, my friend Tom Davis (who was head of the English Department at WRA) invited me back--and I taught ten more years, until June 2011, when I Hung Up the Spikes for the last time. (I had one year off at WRA for health-related issues.)

And since then? Well, the late summers have felt ... weird.

I see the back-to-school signs in the shop windows; I see school buses on their practice runs; I see athletes in pre-school practices; I see the many Facebook posts from parents (most are former students!) who are sending their kids off to school; I hear people talking about it in the coffee shop ...

And, as I said, it's just weird not to be a part of it any longer.

Occasionally, someone will ask me if I miss it.

Yes and no.

I miss the kids, my colleagues--and the feeling that I'm doing something ... important.

I do not miss the paper-grading and course- and lesson-planning that consumed evenings and weekends and holidays throughout my career.

I do not miss, especially, the Testing Mania that has swarmed over the public schools like some kind of Biblical plague. (The plague was just arriving when I left in Jan. 97.)

But ... the kids ... the colleagues ... the classroom exchanges ... There's really no replacement for them.

I keep busy. I have two blogs. I write. I review a book a week for Kirkus Reviews. I read stuff I've always meant to. I read new stuff. I read some newer writers I've never had time for. I go to movies. I spend lots of time with The Love of My Life. I write to my mom, to friends (snail-mail!). I work out (most) every afternoon. (I used to love exercising; now--with age and declining health--I find it more and more difficult--even odious.) I go to bed a lot earlier than I used to. Bed--where I read about an hour, then stream some things ...

We still travel a little. We just got back from the Stratford Theatre Festival in Canada (our fifteenth consecutive year--saw 11 plays in 6 days!). Soon, we're going to Lenox, Mass., to help celebrate my mom's 98th birthday. I've been hoping to take one more trip back to Oklahoma to see the various shrines of my boyhood. Not sure that will happen. But if I could do it this fall ... ?

But still. As I sit in my coffee-shop chair next to the window, many school buses pass by me--not fifteen feet away.

And I feel ... loss. There's really no other word for it.