Today, the smell of the fresh cut grass reminded me of early spring, when students sit in school and begin to get spring fever. They still have a few months to go before summer break, but they feel the fever deep inside—they need to be outside. What I sometimes would tell them is that we teachers also felt spring fever, and that it is so hard for us to keep teaching adjectives and adverbs, Macbeth and Les Mis, and that we dread the testing season in April because we too need to be outside.
Every head turns to the windows if we hear the roar of that first spring motorcycle, and I have to turn my face away from the students when I hear this, for the gray skirt and muddy boots and salt stained old leather shoes and the puffy coat are just too much to deal with when I need spring as well, but I must say, “Students, settle down. We have to get ready for the big tests coming up.”
This year was the Pandemic spring of 2020, the not-spring. I had planned to write down each day of spring news: what date did the rolled up green open to leaves? What day did the first hint of crepe paper yellow show on the witch hazel? What day did the snow drops bloom? And did the trout lily survive, did the daffodil bulbs make it through the squirrel’s hunt? What’s the earliest date the chipmunks emerge, their metabolisms too fast to survive winter while awake?
This year, there was
no spring, only a season
of trying not to breathe.
(Image of milkweed in a prairie from the Creative Commons.)
Laura Lee 