Live Water and Light

Rainy Days, Rip Tides, and the Elusive Lightness of Being

"The present is the wave that explodes over my head, flinging the air with particles at the height of its breathless unroll; it is the live water and light that bears from undisclosed sources the freshest news, renewed and renewing, world without end."
-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

I’ve been struggling this week. Emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, or some combination of all three, it’s been a rough go. It’s common at the end of the school year for teachers to struggle, what with the sudden onset of the climax of the year, the grand culmination that marks the end of a frenzied, focused period of working with groups of students that you have grown close to. I am always somewhat taken by surprise that it’s all over. I guess I shouldn’t be— I can read a calendar after all— but somehow, I always am. Which sends me spinning a bit until I can recalibrate.

Usually, that recalibration occurs for me on the senior trip. I have had the privilege of teaching seniors for 30 years, and just about every one of those years has ended with a trip. Normally, that trip is a joyful marking of the passage of the kids from students to near-graduates (graduation usually ends up being two weeks from the day of the trip). Symbolically, it marks a transition, for them and for me. But this year was different.

Don’t get me wrong, this year’s trip was like scores of others that preceded it: a trip to the Jersey shore, a beach day, a bonding day. Fun. I always consider it the unofficial start of summer. But this year the beach was closed due to stormy weather. Rain. Rip tides. Sheets of iron gray clouds. Really negative energy. The kids, to their credit, persevered and had a great, albeit soggy, day. Leave it to the resilience of teenagers to gripe about something and appear miserable, but end up having a blast with what they were given.

I could talk a lot about how the kids were awesome, that they made lemonade out of lemons, because that was exactly what happened. But it really was no surprise. Their reaction was no different than what previous classes have shown me all these years. I’m lucky to work with students that are like that, flexible and joyful to be in each others’ presence. You’d think I would have soaked in that vibe like I always do, but this year it didn’t happen. This year I sort of languished in the bad weather. I let it get to me, to bring me down.

I didn’t show it, of course, but on the four-hour bus ride home I had lots of reflection time. So as we careened up the Thruway after our day in the wet, I was able to think about why I felt the way I did.

My first reaction, sitting alone in my seat right behind the driver, the rapidly dying light drifting through the tinted windows, was to feel bad that the day didn’t work out the way we all wanted it to. But self-pity is not an option here. I mean, come on, it was a day at the shore after all. I wasn’t in a stiflingly hot school like my colleagues, dealing with adolescents on their last day of classes. It even stopped raining in the afternoon for a bit. So I did, and do, consider myself lucky to have chaperoned the trip. But I was also thrown a bit by the day because I left without the upbeat energy that these trips usually offer.

I started thinking that I was off kilter because the day represented pretty much what our spring here in the northeast has been: soggy and cool. There was no denying that the beach was cold, my sweatshirt and wind pants were evidence of that. The day was not a new start, a new season, a time of transition and change, but seemed to be just a continuation of what we had been dealing with. The rain and wind were no different than the conditions in March, April, and May, just a bit warmer. It was business as usual.

But that really wasn’t it. As much as it’s easy to blame the weather, the soggy conditions couldn’t overshadow the fact that the kids were still ending their high school careers and were on the fast track to graduating. A cause for celebration regardless of the weather. No, it was more personal than that. It was about me, not them.

And that was when I thought about Annie Dillard’s quote, the one about live water and light that I quoted at the start of this essay. I wasn’t thrown by the conditions so much as the fact that I wasn't getting what I needed from them. I wasn’t a good receptor.

Normally I’m thrilled by the beach, I get a jolt from the ocean’s rhythmic pounding. The waves, the wind, the sun and salt, all are the perfect power source. I reflect, I renew, I let it recharge the flagging battery.

Dillard echoes that when she talks about the vibrant energy that comes from the waves that renew us. World without end, right? A perpetual, joyous cycle. Sit back and soak it all up. But for me that day, the water was a gray wall, impenetrable and mysterious. It was like a stoppage. A blackout (gray out?). That day there was no lightness, no renewal, just a solemnity and solidity that prevented me from being uplifted. As the waves pounded the beach, and the wind threatened to whip our hoods and hats off, it was as if we were suspended, stuck, at the spot we had left.

Of course, I didn’t think about this as the buses pulled away from the curb, past the ice cream shops and motels and “cheap, little seashore bars” (I had to throw in a Springsteen quote— “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)”— we were in New Jersey, after all). It was only after we had left the ocean solidly behind us did the empty feeling make sense. Ah, expectations. And the ones that sometimes fail us.

And, to be clear, it wasn’t a crushing, devastating moment. I rallied when I got home. I was ok. I don’t want to sound overly dramatic. There will be plenty of time to juice up the battery— there’s a whole summer waiting out there. But it’s interesting to think about the things that we rely on to sustain us, the traditions and little rituals in life that power us through, and then what happens when life has the nerve to not give us what we expect.

I think I could take a lesson on resilience from my students. Even though I’ve been down this road a few times, on this day I needed to be reminded that the live water and light are still always there, you just sometimes have to look harder for them.