A Final Reflection

For those of you without a syllabus to refer to, next Saturday I will email my final assignments to my course instructors and pray for good grades to complete my first semester of grad school. Our final blog prompt for the semester asks us to reflect on our experiences and what we’ve learned, but it’s such a fitting close that I imagine I might have taken a stab at it without the assignment. (That is, if I would have let myself take the time away from other assignments to do so.)

My three courses have intertwined themselves like the English ivy on the walnut trees, so that I’m not sure what one class has taught me outside of the others. I do know that, of all times in my life to be forced by school to go outside and simply be, this season in my life was the when I needed it the most.

Nature is cruel. Nature keeps winter from disappearing from my region when I just want sunlight. Nature left a pile of feathers behind the garden shed after a hawk caught her dinner. Nature tears shingles from rooftops, floods creekbeds, and brings on cancer and heart attacks and grief.

But nature is kind, too. It’s connected; we’re all in this boat together. I’m not the only person to lose her father suddenly and unexpectedly and on the eve of the most family-oriented holiday of the year, and that knowledge, while not making the loss any less sad, still helps me keep some perspective. Nature is cyclical. Seasons change. Transitions happen. Sometimes, like a democracy, the change in season happens peacefully, without you even noticing. Other times, the passing season refuses to let go its hold. But it still can’t stop the change. Even when there are remnants of cold, the warmth shows itself in little ways.

My life is a series of settings. I track myself based on where I am, not necessarily on who I am or who I’m with or what I’m doing there. What I’ve read this semester and observed in my backyard has reminded me that setting, so strong a character in my life, should be as strong in my writing. As the seasons change, I’ll learn the trick of establishing place.

This backyard won’t be in my family forever, but my family will be in it. It has my dad and my mom and my brother and me stamped in every inch of its soil. Our pets have been buried here, fresh veggies have been harvested, firewood has been stacked and wine has been sipped in the flickering light of mosquito candles and the shining summer moon.

I’ve always loved my yard. I took photos of the yard with me to Germany, and I bragged about my yard when I missed having space to breathe in Baltimore. But after a semester of simultaneous stress and grief and healing, I love this yard like I would love a doctor who cured me of a disease. Still, a big part of healing is getting past the healing and back to a normal life.

This morning, I watched a pair of hawks soaring on the wind.