The beginning of the school year, and getting back to a more regimented daily routine, has always been invigorating to me. So when the yellow school buses started rolling last week, I grieved my unfinished summer goals briefly before putting myself into a new gear. The momentum of the buses, and the children starting over with new teachers and new classrooms, was energy I could draft from. And like the children, I discovered anew that the loss of summer’s freedom fades quickly.
When I heard that the five year old twins down the street were starting Pre-K, I felt a thrill and a shock. Had five years already passed? I watched them bicycle by my house and pass the school bus - the whole family – mom, dad and the five kids, including two sets of twins, forging on like the indomitable ducklings in Make Way for Ducklings, one of many books they mastered long ago. Home schooled until now, they seemed to be wiser, more curious, and more street savvy than their peers. Though their bike ride to school would be a long one for short legs on new bikes, through the busiest streets this quiet part of town can boast, they peddled full steam ahead, undaunted, completely oblivious to how contagious their commitment and energy were to me.
Soon, neighborhood kids all around me spilled out of their houses, their new haircuts and wet, slicked back hair making them look two years older and as many inches taller. The five year old next door climbed in the car wired into his first headset, his little brother toddling along behind and, like all younger children, wishing he could go to school, too. Kids live in so many different kinds of pecking orders, and I felt a sudden envy of their seemingly easy adjustment to balancing them all.
Don’t we adults compare ourselves to others as well? I’m reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, the inspirational biography by Tracy Kidder of Dr. Paul Farmer and his work to eradicate Infectious Disease in Haiti, Peru and Russia. The man is superhuman – his heart, mind, vision, mission and energy. It is impossible not to feel guilty I don’t do more with the time given me, or compare myself to how much he gets done in a single day. His accomplishments are sheer magic. And he started with so little. Public school buses and new school clothes was more than he could claim as a child and yet his peripatetic family life gave him more than enough coping skills for life: compassion and curiosity, commitment and passion, and the zeal of searching for cures.
Though many of our public schools in Georgia suffer in budget, imagination and resources, it is entirely possible that any of these schools, public or private, excellent or poor, could foster another Paul Farmer, a young kid who grows up to succeed despite hardship and with nothing to bank on except his experience in making do and overcoming.
We owe our success in life to the motivation we receive from our parents, or parent substitutes, from life’s adventures, or from luck. Shortly after the school buses pulled away, a young man knocked on my door. He wanted to sell me a bottle of some miraculous cleaning fluid I’ve bought before. His pitch made more sense to me than most of the folks I’ve talked to in the last year. With only a seventh grade education and foster homes to fall back on, he’d adopted Zig Zigler and Og Mandino as his role models, to better the life of his three year old son. He is today’s Paul Farmer and he will make it by sheer grit, hard work and wise choices. And he inspired me to set my goals a little higher like the five year old twins riding their bikes to school.
Nothing feels as good as making progress on my dreams. The harder I work, the more I like myself. Just like the cyclical rhythm of the waves at the seashore, the momentum and energy of going back to school is as compelling and secure as any rhythm I experience.
But, aside from the energy, I rejoice in feeling like a kid again, when I know in my gut that the whole world lies ahead, with nothing impossible. I smiled at my memories of losing my lunch money, falling down and getting stitches, and not being able to remember the difference between ‘through’ and ‘though’ and ‘thorough’.
The youth passing by my door remind me I can overcome mountains beyond mountains. Summertime helps me see ways of crossing over, of overcoming my perceived obstacles. But fall gives me the energy to actually do it. The sound of the school buses starts that cycle of faith each year in which I transform dreams into triumphs, from opening my eyes to the inspiration and know-how that surrounds me, to realizing I won’t lose my passion and ingenuity en route.
