Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends” was on the radio…again. Billie Joe Armstrong’s love song to the pain he’s endured since his father’s death from cancer is a perennial staple on independent radio stations everywhere this time of year. I heard it on River Road during my commute. Thursday is a sleep-in day at school, which means everything is a half-hour later. I used to be an organized person. I didn’t sleep in. I made coffee, hula hooped in the kitchen, and went for a short walk. with a warm ginger muffin in my hand. I made it to campus in time to do all the stuff I’m supposed to do.
Last night, I looked through one of my favorite educator/poet’s books, Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School by Georgia Heard. I want to be Georgia Heard. She is a writer and teacher who gets to go around the world helping people slow down to observe and create. Just like Green Day’s song, I’ve read the words she quotes from former U.S. Poet Laureate, Stanley Kunitz’s The Testing Tree, before. He’s not wrong:
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.
