{3 min read}
It’s not imperceptible if you’re looking for it… Merely a child passing beneath can subtly disturb enough air surrounding them, and those tissue-paper tentacles will dance, dangling lightly from the rainbow bodies of party-decoration jellyfish, suspended from her classroom ceiling.
Each August for a couple decades, as the schoolyear’s start looms, the excitement of her vocation to the hearts and minds of God’s children with single-digit ages and eternal souls bubbling over with distraction and wonder… Well, it all makes her a little anxious. Aye, on a precipice of overwhelm. How couldn’t it, really?
She has the right hardware to hang a dozen of them from the rails of the drop-ceiling, but she’s barely 5 feet tall, and in her late fourth decade, so how the hell will she hang them? Same way as always. Marshaling the gifts God sprinkles onto her journey’s path. That’s how her divine hair cooperates with its Source.
She will conform the retired math room – mostly cleaned out now – to her chosen theme:
Tropical Paradise.
Two additional souls tenderized by her invitation and very being, plus a borrowed hammer to tap the pushpins through the beach tapestry and fresh paint, high on a naked wall… An unwieldy hot glue gun to adorn with a grass skirt the back table on whose ocean-blue surface will rest the inflated palm tree, destined to wilt slowly, a slow air leak stealing its turgor. But her delight is firm.
Her November opens by receipt of a commendation letter from an organization to which she was recommended by a former student because she inspired him. She inspires children. Not easy.
Two days later, exasperated, her head throbs because of “regular” work stress, and the antics of a few troubling students – the sort of episode she has *regularly* defused for decades.
Mortal, as she is, the exceptional hugeness of her soul has slipped her mind.
Her head throbs more loudly than her heart.
.
Next: Chapter 2, Paradise Lost
{~3 minutes}
.
Neil D. 2021-11-04
Feel with Neil 