June day

I’m so frustrated! Ed, listen to my ten points of frustration!

It's early in the evening and by coincidence, we're pulling into the driveway on our motorbikes at the same time. He had his work errands, I had mine and now here we are, except I just want to unleash the torrent, just for a minute...

Except that you can never really expect sympathy from Ed for the inconsequential irritants in life. He’ll give you that look that asks – really? And this made you upset? Incredible... And so as I glide from point one, to point two, to point three (and so I invested my quarterly savings – my piddly thousand, just before the market REALLY plummeted!), to point four (and then the eye doctor said that what with glaucoma in my family I should have my eye photographed.... no no no, I did not have it done, because, guess what, they don’t have that capability at my doctor’s office and I ask you, why go there then if it means that you have to make two more appointments this summer to pull it all together and you know, there’s nothing even wrong with my eyes!), to point number five (and the administrative assistant hadn’t given me all the exams to grade and so I still have one to read!), and so on...

Let’s go inside and eat.

Neither of us had had much of anything today. Fixing food is a good antidote to frustration.

Eh, but life is good. The flowers in the various beds are just emerging and they look strong and healthy...


 


... (as opposed to the veggies – they look severely chomped). I’m tired, yes, I’m tired but that is so completely my own fault.

...Because last night, I got an email from the school of my childhood in New York. UNIS (the United Nations International School, where I was a student for six very young years).

The email told me that I could see this year's graduation ceremonies on the UN website. There’s a link – click and watch!

I click and watch. Eventually Ed joins me. We spend several past-midnight-hours listening to kids we never heard of make speeches, play musical instruments, smiling as they march up to receive a diploma.

Why are we so mesmerized by this? It could have been any school, any group of eager camera-toting parents, anyone’s speech, no better no worse than countless others given this month across the country.

But it was my school, and as I watch I have to let myself wonder  – what would it have been like had I stayed? And graduated from there? A UNIS grad, rather than one from the Lycee of General Studies in Warsaw, named after the Polish writer Zmichowska?

The students’ names are called, one by one they walk up, all 116 of them, the girls in such high heals, the boys in suits. Boring, right? (A redeeming feature – the graduation was in the General Assembly, so it felt very UN-ish.) No, not boring at all. For whatever odd reason, we are drawn right in.

And so today I’m tired. On my way to town, I pause and watch Lee work in her fields. She’s helped by her daughter and her son in law. Her grandchildren are there as well, eerily bopping into view, then disappearing in the rows of pea stalks.

Lee gives me a bag full of peas and so now we have our supper. 

 (By comparison, our own pea plants are daintily small. Singularly pretty. Singularly.)

And after – well now, here’s the good part: my little girl alights from the Chicago bus. Here for just two days, but I’m not complaining, no not at all.

And did I mention that the colors in the garden are becoming more intense? They are. Welcome to June. The pretty month.