This dewdrop world—
Is a dewdrop world
And yet. And yet…
-Kobayashi Issa
Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” was blaring in my head as I drove past the schools this week. I can picture today’s students joyfully slamming lockers and throwing papers in the air like in the movie Dazed and Confused. Wait, they have computers, not notebooks. I hope they don’t chuck their Chromebooks.
There were plenty of smiles at my youngest child’s elementary school. And yet more than a couple of kids were teary as they hugged each other goodbye.
One little boy ran into the arms of his mother, his shoulders shaking from crying. She held him and stroked his hair, asking him what was wrong. He could only sniffle despondently. Last days can be hard, too.
My kids are not in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School District, and yet I’ve followed the news of the recent closure of Glenwood Elementary School with sadness. I understand the basics of the financial picture and decline of student enrollment.
And yet I also feel the pain. A school can hold a special, sacred place in the hearts of students, teachers and families. Glenwood’s PTA President Emily Kreutzer is right to highlight the “fierce, loving and unwavering” advocacy by the school’s supporters and to praise the administrators and educators: “Your dedication has shaped lives in ways that will last long after the building closes.”
Life is about last days. The haiku poets of Japan, like Issa, wrote about the concept of mono no aware, which translates as “the beauty of dying things” or “the beauty of transient things.” This really is “a dewdrop world” where all things come to an end.
Back to the last day of my child’s elementary school and that crying student in the arms of his mother: suddenly, his teacher jogged out of the building, calling his name. The boy broke away from his mom and hugged his teacher’s waist as she exclaimed, “I didn’t get the chance to say how much I would miss you!” The boy hugged her one last time, and yet, and yet, when he pulled away, he smiled.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
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