These final days of school go on like goundhog Fridays, heading into a weekend that’s slow to arrive but then is suddenly permanent. Serial completions and ceremonies, hikes and walks and picnics and games. Finishing up, finishing touches, finishing at last. There’s one more week, then it’s four more days, one more lesson, a last assembly, goodbye. What matters doesn’t matter as much as it did when it was urgent and pressing and due last week. Report cards and comments and reflections – an abundance of words describing what was, who did and didn’t, where we grew and how we learned – creating threads of remnants we won’t remember a year from now.
These final days that run hot and cold; the kids are wild and inwardly so are we. Conversations about summer plans run aground in my mind, I cannot think of the future. ‘This is our last class’ I have heard myself say 6 times or more in the last two days. Our last class but not the last time we’ll see each other. The final days are full of lasts but who can know the difference? We are preparing for release and rupture, too. Our routines and protocols are already for the birds it seems, but in two days’ time we can officially toss them out the window into the fresh hot air of summer. These final days that dog us with all the things we want and don’t want from ourselves, from our kids, from the thing we call a school year. These final days – the infinite tease – they mark us when we think we are marking them.
Sherri's Slice of Life Project 
“We are preparing for release and rupture” and rightfully so. Enjoy your hot summer days as you toss your cares to the wind.
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Such careful word choice, paints pictures and leaves me thinking. Cheers to summer!
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This is a deceptively short post that had me rereading and rereading these lines so rich in meaning: “We are preparing for release and rupture, too. Our routines and protocols are already for the birds it seems, but in two days’ time we can officially toss them out the window into the fresh hot air of summer. These final days that dog us with all the things we want and don’t want from ourselves, from our kids, from the thing we call a school year. These final days – the infinite tease – they mark us when we think we are marking them.”
“Release and rupture” – that tearing of relationships is what makes these days so incredibly hard. We build them and then “release” them. I have always dreaded commencement ceremonies and I know that I must be there to mark the time with them, but it absolutely slays me emotionally. And finally, your idea of “marking” has my imagination spinning stories. Thank you for this beauty.
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I’m in that cycle now too. We have only 10 days left, but it might as well be 100. We have two more Tuesdays and two more Mondays, but three more Wednesdays (only two more after tomorrow!) Our routines and protocols are for the birds soon – but right now I am clinging tight. I know that once I let them go the year is done. I won’t have many of these students with me next year. We are bonded in a different way than usual because now I’m spending the day in their homes with them. It will feel good to end the year, but it will definitely be a rupture for me too.
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That opening line – TRUTH! This slice of last days is real and magnificently rendered – how I love this zinger of a line: “We are preparing for rupture and release.” Other folks may not realize just how long it takes educators to decompress from the grind even in a “normal” year; vacation hardly feels like vacation in the beginning. But – here’s to the start. Cheers, Sherri!
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