Answering The Bell

 There I sat, awaiting that first bell. Not the one that would bring all the children inside the building for the first time in eighteen months. The one in side my head. The one that was ringing to remind me to wake up. To throw off the covers and the sleep that was binding me fast to the horizontal. I needed to be moving because there was so very much to do.

There always is at this time of year. Even last year, we were meeting to figure out how we were going to bring two hundred kids to a spot on a Zoom meeting to shepherd them through a year of isolation. We were constructing, in one of my colleague's words, an airplane at the moment that we were taking it for a test flight. And maybe that airplane never quite got off the ground, but we did make it fly. After a fashion.

Now we are charged with inviting all those kids back into the hallways, playground and classrooms that we left behind so very long ago. How can we make everyone happy and comfortable? Custodians, teachers, parents, kids, neighbors? This great big old building that has been sitting so quietly in the middle of the block is suddenly alive again with the business of elementary education. This is where we work, and for many of us, this is where we live. 

This is the moment where everything is possible. This is the time when we see our path is clear. Soon enough will come a distraction or a meteor crashing down from the heavens. Kids will fall down and scrape their legs. Teachers will be absent without lesson plans for substitutes who may or may not show up. It will rain during recess time, forcing all those kids back inside. 

And there will be days that I will not feel so inspired. I won't have all these high-minded ideals and expectations. You have my permission at this moment to remind me, politely, that I was once this full of life affirming energy and idealism. Right now it's more than just a job. It really is a calling. That's the bell I hear ringing. It doesn't stop. I find it very hard to ignore. Sometimes I am not fully aware of the clanging. It's there. It's an alarm and it's a reminder. 

It's coming from inside my head.