Back Home

Yes, back home in San Francisco from the Orff Conference in Kansas City, but today, back to yet another home for the first time in some two and a half years— teaching live at The San Francisco School! My colleagues James and Sofia at a wedding in Spain and how delighted was I to be asked to sub? Very!!

 

So of course, the class plans have been whirling about in my head, including last night’s dream where they simply weren’t working. My first two classes are with 7^thgraders who were my students in 4^th grade when I retired, my daughter’s students in 5^th grade and my colleague’s students in 6^th and now 7^th. Most all the kids I’ll see today are ones that I’ve taught, except for two years of new preschool students and the new kids in 7^th and 8^th who entered in 6^th after I retired. The music room has been somewhat changed, the second music room where I’ll teach two classes is in a new place, some new teachers in various grades and new folks in the office, but mostly I imagine it will still feel like home.

 

And so continues the theme of the homes I carry with me. The reunion with Spain with people and places I’ve returned to time and again for over 30 years, the seat on the plane and hotel room where I reclaim my habitual solitude, the teaching space filled with teachers eager to learn how to love their work and students more, the Orff family back full force after the “training-wheels” post-pandemic Conference last year and of course, my actual home, newly painted, but still mostly the same, with food in the refrigerator I choose, music stacked on top of the piano, bookshelves filled with the hundreds of books I’ve read and over a thousand CD’s/records I’ve listened to. My zazen pillow, my desk with one drawer filled with decades of little Memo books chronicling the lists I’ve made to keep my life rolling, the 30 plus handwritten journals in the hall closet that I started in 1973. Home.

 

The days roll on, moving from one home to another, and this traveler is grateful for it all.