Wednesday, May 20, 2009

A Hint of Melancholy

I'm starting to feel the effects of the End of the School Year Blues. Every spring amid the joys and triumphs of my students and their great plans for the future, I get a little low. They speak confidently and excitedly about summer plans: jobs, swimming lessons, and vacations. We are all glad to be wrapping up music pieces and moving forward. Truthfully, there is a big part of me that is looking forward to the break too. I have a long list of hobbies and gardening and summer activities.
But deep down there is a little hunk of my heart that hurts. It will miss my seniors. It will miss my Slovakian student. Abe Lincoln writes often of a melancholy in his life; I ponder what that might have been like.
I got news that a girlfriend of mine miscarried this week at the half-way point of an already challenging pregnancy. I grieve. Another friend has decided to adopt after years of heartache.
I found out that my brother is going to whisk his lovely fiancee off to Hawaii, and they are getting married on the beach while they are there. I'm so happy for them, and yet I'd love to be there.
Friends of ours are divorcing, friends suffer job loss, friends may lose their home to foreclosure.
On the other hand, friends met and fell in love, the flowers are blooming, summer break is almost here.

3 comments:

  1. the various flavors of life. students come, students go. life in flux. roll with the tide, like the ocean...sorry to hear about your friend who had the miscarriage, know that will be hard on her...

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  2. Sorry you're feeling a bit blue.

    Speaking of Lincoln, there's an excellent book Lincoln's Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk, you might like.

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  3. Thanks, Willow, I'm going to go get it right now!

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