As I work on finishing one of my manuscripts, I want to start a series called, “Wore|Read|Wrote.” They’ll be short posts on something I wore, read, and wrote, and how they’re connected.
The morning I shared a poem from Handsprings was cold; not spring-like at all. In fact, if I didn’t know the time of year, the sky looked like a fall sky: wispy, fluffy clouds and a sky that was a mixture of grey and blue. The only hint of spring were what the trees revealed: white and hot pink blossoms, and barely there green buds – not the colors of fire of mid October. I preferred the sunshine and warm temperatures we’d had, but I didn’t mind the sky and the crisp air, and I didn’t mind zipping up my polka dotted vest and wrapping a scarf around my neck. In the midst of a changing season, it’s good to remember fondly what’s past, and what will come again.
The kids and I wrote a poem together called, “Goodbye, Winter, Hello, Spring” after the poem by Douglas Florian I’d read to them. “What are some things we say goodbye to in the winter?” I asked. “Snowpants, sledding, hot chocolate,” they told me. “How about spring? What are some things in spring that you see, that you don’t see in the winter?” They told me butterflies and bees. They talked about smelling the grill and going to baseball games,’ eating ice-cream and popsicles. I wrote what they said down on a piece of butcher paper – a poem written together with these children I’m getting to know so late in the school year.
The morning we read and wrote poetry I received an email from someone about teaching middle school. I don’t know how she knew I was once a middle school teacher, but she mentioned wishing I would consider teaching that age so her daughters could be in my class. I wasn’t expecting to be nostalgic for middle school this soon, but her email came at a time when I was wondering what the sixth graders I used to teach in Detroit would’ve done with Florian’s poem. How would they say goodbye to winter? How would they say hello to spring?
“Mrs. Feyen,” one student asked, tugging on my white t-shirt so that I could lean close to him. “Is it OK to drink hot chocolate in the spring even though it might be hot?”
“Of course,” I told him. “I don’t think there’s a rule about when it’s OK to drink hot chocolate.”
The taste we have for something comes and goes, or maybe it never leaves. Maybe it waits quietly for the right time to be stirred.
Love. 🙂