Every Ending is a New Beginning

but first its a long walk through the wilderness

Welcome to Pocketful of Prose, a community for sharing stories. As always links are in bold, and there’s an audio of this post if that works better for your life. Big thanks to Karen S. Bonnell for becoming a founding member to pocketful of prose this week. Karen started a new poetry Substack, and you can check it out here. Her first poem is for her dad. Happy Father’s Day to my dad and Dan and to all the fathers out there.

Without further ado, today’s pocket.

Every ending is a new beginning.

I’ve been saying this a lot this week, this week of transition, after graduation, when the students I started working with during a pandemic, walked through our halls for the last time. They’re special kids. Tim bravely turned his camera on during those first online class meetings in the fall of 2020. A few other kids followed suit, and we all felt less alone. When someone in our advisory celebrated a birthday, Tim played his viola for us. We sang together in our separate spaces. The wi-fi was lagging, and most of us, save Tim, Chandra and Celia, were off key, but that only made it more beautiful. During one meeting in January, I shared how our boiler broke, a double blow in the pandemic, which meant we were not only learning at home but we were learning at home in a house that didn’t have heat. It was so cold the olive oil on the counter froze. Fortunately for us, we had a split heating system, so we had heat in the bedrooms upstairs, so while we waited for our new boiler, we lived out of our bedrooms. We didn’t think our Covid world could get any smaller but for a few weeks it did. “I didn’t realize how much I took for granted,” I told the class. “I have a whole new gratitude for heat.”

Tim nonchalantly shared that his boiler was broken too. “Our boiler broke years ago,” he said.

“Are you guys okay?” I asked. It occurred to me that I still didn’t realize how much I took for granted.

“Yeah, we have some space heaters. I wear a lot of sweaters.” Tim let out a slight laugh. Later that day, I received an email from another students’ mom. She had overheard our Zoom, and she wanted to see if there was anything she could do to help. My world grew big again.

When some of our advisory students started failing math because online learning turned out to be a terrible way for most kids to learn, Tim volunteered to help tutor them. When Anna needed help in math this past year, I asked Tim for help, and he stepped up again. I knew that he’d be able to help her, and I knew that Anna would like Tim. He is genuine in a way that most people are not.

Tim was offered a full ride at a prestigious University. He will start in September.

Every ending is a new beginning.

I’ve been saying this a lot this week as I drive Anna back and forth from driver’s ed, as she now enters her senior year in high school. I was surprised at the slight ache I felt saying goodbye to Tim and my other advisory students, the ones I had been with since day one. What’s it going to feel like for the one I’ve really been with since day one?

Every ending is a new beginning

I’ve been saying this a lot this week as Deena, my colleague, and I sort through all the instructional resources we have in our office, including all the teaching books I have accumulated over the past twenty plus years. Just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s not useful. In my mid-life, I need to believe this, but a book of best practices with a copyright date of 1996, come on now. We filled four or five boxes of books with similar expiration dates. We uncovered so much dust. And still there were a few books that I blew the dust off of, Deena jokingly asked me not to do this in our office full of recycled unfiltered air, and I laughed, and then placed my relic back on the shelf… a paperback copy of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, nothing special except that my maiden name is written on the inside flap, and my hand-written annotations cover almost every page. I doubt I’ll ever use it again, but just picking it up transports me to another time, and for now, that’s enough reason to keep it.

Every ending is a new beginning

I’ve been saying this a lot this week as Seabass asks my help sorting through his room. Grandma is coming to visit, and he wants to present a clean room, so “she won’t judge me,” he jokes.  We fill two boxes full of clothes that no longer fit his size or taste, and he apologizes for tossing a shirt that still fits. “Someone gave it to me,” he says. I’m reminded of the guilt that things can carry. “No need to apologize,” I said. “It’s good to know what you like, and it’s good to let things go.” We continue to toss things he no longer needs or wants into the pile, and we each feel a little lighter.

Seabass holds on to a few things…the things which tangibly transport him in time, the things which remind him of who he was and who he is, of what he’s done and what he might do…the cardboard candy dispenser he made when he was eight or nine. “I think that’s the best thing I ever made,” he said. The cardboard Batman mask he made all by himself on the backside of a Joe’s O’s box, when he was probably all of four. He will be ready to part with that mask before I am. When I look at it, four-year-old Seabass appears before me, his short, fat fingers covered in black marker, carefully cutting eye slits out with small pink scissors. For his birthday that year, we gave him a multi-roll tape dispenser which everyone laughed at, but it was his favorite gift. He used it to make the candy cardboard dispenser years later. He used it to make so many things.

Every ending is a new beginning

I’ve been saying this a lot this week as the end of the school year looks different this year.

On the day before the last day of school, Anna wrote thank you notes to each one of her teachers and delivered them. I have raised two children with grateful hearts who understand reciprocity. Anna helped clean our house in preparation for Grandma’s visit, in fact, everyone helped. I’m no longer taking sole responsibility for things that are not mine to carry alone. I’m shedding that role in the same way Seabass shed the shirts that no longer suited him. Anna spent most of the past few days celebrating the end of the year with her best friend. Seabass also helped with family chores and then went to Dairy Queen with friends to celebrate his summer freedom. I celebrated my freedom too, both from the daily grind of teaching and from a version of motherhood that no longer exists for me. My kids are more independent now than they have ever been.  On my free afternoon, I went to the nursery and wondered down each aisle. I talked to the people that worked there about plants and about writing, and I brought home some new native and drought tolerant plants for my garden, Agastache, bee balm, goldenrod, among others and one garden sun climbing rose I will plant to replace the hydrangea that died over the winter. I’m letting go of trying to grow hydrangeas in our climate. I bought seventeen plants in all and three seed packets, one for every year I have been teaching.

As I packed up my office on Friday, on the last day of school, I came across two Avatar the Last Airbender books that Anna and Seabass both read, that Mateo relished when he was with us. When Mateo left us to return to his dad, we filled our car with things we thought he would want in his new home, his Spiderman comforter, the Appa pillow pet we gave him for his birthday, some of his favorite books among other things. Weeks and months later, though, we were still finding Mateo’s things, under the bed, in the laundry, tucked behind a bookshelf. When I found his kindergarten book sandwiched between two other books on the bookshelf, I made sure to get it back to him. Almost two years later, we’re still finding things though, and I’ve decided it’s time to let go of the idea that these items are needed or wanted. I remember the guilt that things can carry, and I’m choosing to release all of us from this guilt. I put the Avatar books in my backpack with the intention of putting them in our Little Free Library when I get home.

On my bike ride home, I see an adorable little boy walking next to his parents and his little sister. He looks like he is four or five, the same age Seabass was when he made the Batman mask, just slightly younger than Mateo was when he first came to live with us. Like Mateo, he sports a sweet Mohawk, and his skin is the same warm shade of brown. I stop my bike and say hello to the family. “I’m a teacher,” I say. “I have some books in my backpack. I wonder if your kids might like them.” They look at me with wary kindness. I imagine they are worried that I’ll pull out a bible or worse, a new world translation of it, so I try to be quick.  I pull the Avatar books out of my bag. “I don’t know if you know Avatar,” I say.

“The last airbender,” the dad smiles, his voice expressing relief. “Of course.”

I hand the books to the little boy who eyes me indifferently until he sees the books. When he sees the cover and recognizes Aang’s face, he breaks into a wide grin. He skips away, turning the pages of the book. “Thank you,” his parents say as I wave goodbye.

Every ending is a new beginning. I’ve been saying this a lot this week, and when I see this little boy skipping away with my book in hand, I think I’m starting to believe it.

Earlier today, though, I read Sarah Bessey’s introduction to Field Notes for the Wilderness, where she includes a poem by Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, SJ and it dawned on me that I can believe that every ending is a new beginning and I can also recognize that there is a space of time that exists between each ending and new beginning, and this space is a wilderness we don’t always know how to charter, which is why I found so much comfort in Pierre’s words.

Today, I’m going to close out with them in case you find yourself needing them as much as I did. The poem refers to God, so if that’s not your thing, feel free to just skip it.

I would love to continue this conversation in the comments. What resonates with you? What’s ending for you? What’s beginning? What poems bring you comfort?

Patient Trust

by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the

end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something

Unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress

That it is made by passing through some stages of instability—

And that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;

Your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,

Let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don’t try to force them on,

as though you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)

will make of you tomorrow,

Only God could say what this new spirit

gradually forming within you will be.

Give Our Lord the benefit of believing

that his hand is leading you,

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.