Jet Lag Part One - School

Jet Lag Day, Thursday September 24

So, I have decided that being at the school is a little like the movie “King of Hearts” without the guy in the tutu (but there still is time).

The school building is BIG! Like a city school building. But very beautiful. It is PINK on the outside with red trimmed windows. Shaped like an ancient Egyptian temple complete with pylons. Wow! Pretty! And tall palm trees around the exterior. It is not a campus with grassy lawns and the concrete wall surrounding the school butts up to the sidewalk. White plaster walls on the inside. Marble hallways. Wood floor classrooms. Smartboards on the bare walls. And Noise! Noise! Noise!.Sanders, jackhammers? ( not sure), regular hammers definitely and just banging in general. We will teach in these conditions. I mean, will we teach in these conditions? (I think so) Only the first floor is done as we are only going to 5th grade and only have partial enrollment. David, one of the teachers, and I go exploring. The first floor is basically habitable – there is one working bathroom with doors, and electricity. No open studs or wiring hanging down for the most part. It seems pretty safe. Up one floor the walls are not truly finished. The stairs are missing a banister. The floors are messay with plaster and some rubble. Up another floor there are no true stairs just rubble – ish stairs. The completely unfinished halls are blocked by plaster board and we cannot get by. There is a doorway opening to the empty elevator shaft!! Note to self – children are NOT allowed to wander in this building! After CAREFULLY decending the non-existent stairs (no handrails either) we go to the ground level floor. The basement is mostly rubble in hallways with the outline of a drama room and the beginnings of the swimming pool. I cannot describe it but the center of the lower level of the building is opened on two sides to the outdoors so the pool will be shaded by the building but mostly will feel like it is “out”side. Interesting. We walk the cluttered halls and in one room see the most unlikely scene. Two men plastering the walls of one of the rooms. Why? Who knows?!

So, on my first day I am completely jet lagged. We meet to discuss grading and I plan to volunteer to be on the committee to make the “report card” template. It's a short meeting. Not much conversation. Then four of us leave to buy rugs. You heard me. We left to buy rugs. We went to a BIG! Rug store and bought – I don't know 10? giant rugs for the classrooms. All colors. Spent about 1 hour and I have no idea how much money. Price tags were not noticed. My rug looks like the pattern from a boardshort. Deep blue/purple with hibiscus flowers outlined in green white and purple. YAY!

Back at school not much else happens. I ask one lady in charge if we could please have water to drink at school and she promises to make it happen. The word “union” floats through my mind and I am amazed it is with fondness! I ask another woman in charge if we could please have some toilet paper and paper towels and hand soap in the bathroom. The teachers have taken to bringing their own bathroom supplies from home and keeping them in their bags for their own personal use. I leave this writing to put some in my box of supplies ready to go the next time I leave for school!! I ask for the key to the library – an impossibly small room for such a large school. After A LOT! Of wandering around the man comes and hands me a key. I open the door and refuse to give the key back. In broken Arabic I explain that he has many keys and I only have one so that I am keeping my key. I have a pack of cigarettes in my box to give him for his troubles. . . . The internet does not work. The air conditioning does not work. The uniforms are in and are cute! Blue and White ginham smocks over navy jumpers and white shirts for the girls, white polos, grey pants, and blue and white stripe sear sucker jackets for the boys. I am nervous that I will look like a slob next to my students! The turf for the soccer pitch is nowhere to be seen but I think it will be fun to use colored chalk all over the cement “field”. Although, it is kind of bright standing on that big white expanse. Blinding actually.

We leave in a mico bus. Seven of us plus stacks of books. Smooshy. It's hot but not as hot as August. I take in all the sights. The desert, the traffic, the trucks piled like Dr. Seuss' Grinch sleigh, the donkey carts trotting slowly along the highway.

I lean toward the window and the hot wind tousles my hair. I sit on the front seat and think of my dog Friday. .

6:30 Chapel - Leaving Nantucket

Leaving Nantucket was not as hard the second time. But it still was hard, bittersweet. We have a tradition to throw a penny as the boat passes our lighthouse, Brant Point. I took the 6:30 am boat and traveled until noon the following day. Thank goodness for prescriptions and for the cool lounge chairs in Charles de Gaulle aiport where I slept soundly (robbers could have taken anything they wanted!) for at least 2 hours. But here is the story of the leaving - if you are conscious to it - a holy time.

Deep orange sky, scattered purple clouds, black silhouettes of boats all reflected in glass-still water. Along the town dock bright white lights sit atop poles interspersed with the pilings. Now that they are competing with the light of the sun it seems impossible that they could have offered enough light in the dark of night. Nantucket pulled out all the stops to keep me home on Tuesday morning when I left, Casey and I actually, in the Honda, on the 6:30am boat. Tempted as I was by all this beauty to call off the Adventure in Egypt Part Two, we were on the boat when the whistle blew leaving the dock. I thought of all my friends just waking up to that wonderful woeful sound thinking of me, and thinking of me thinking of them, our thoughts swirling above the island together.

We morning departers gathered for our ablutions at the railing. Here is the elderly man and is wife and what looks to be an adult daughter. The women gaze at the scenery and gently put their hands on the man's elbows whenever he seems to be turning away from them. He jitters quietly as if he were a vehicle with the motor left running. His hands worry over the buttons of his cardigan. The women watch the sky turn from orange to yellow. Their faces as quiet as the waters below, only their arms occasionally reaching out to guide their husband, father.

Here comes the artist I know from way-back, I am pretty sure I heard she has cancer. She looks much thinner. We smile at each other as she passes me and finds her place at the rail. This is a sacred time, for silence but our smiles instantly transmit a conversation we do not need to speak - “Hi how are you?” “Not well” “I know, I heard.” “Yeah, it is what it is.” “Yeah, I know, I am sorry. I am a woman too and maybe I will have to suffer this way as well someday – could happen.” “I hope not.” “We have known each other for a long time.” “Yes, we have, we have . . .” In just a look, and a smile, we rekindle all our Nantucket history and without a word turn back to our thoughts.

Here is the young couple (obviously from OFF-island) smiling quietly at each other, leaning in to each other as they speak. “Do you have the pennies?”, “Of course! Two shiny ones.” It is early and they cannot get enough of each other. They are cute together. I look away feeling as if this is too intimate a moment to observe.

I think of my friend who admonishes me each time we leave, “Be sure to throw your penny!” I used to be defiant and NOT throw one just to show that not coming back was just FINE with me. Now I am sure to have my penny ready. She always chose hers and her daughters' so carefully, still does I think. Each one selected for its date/numbers and their relevance to the person throwing it. I am amazed at how sad I am to think of this detail from her life. I hold my penny in my pocket and feel how light it is, and small.

I savor the view with my fellow travelers as we lean against the rail altar. No priest but the sky. No sermons but our own. Brant Point has a large skirt of sand – low tide. Two people walk slowly on the edge, their heads bowed searching for the perfect shell. I long to be with them, find out who they are, how long THEY will stay, tell them, I almost moved to Cairo once, can you believe that?? Two gulls fly by below us, and I watch their backs as their wings lift once, twice, and then glide along above their reflections. I think, what an unusual view.

We say our prayers, and throw the accompanying pennies, to come back. I say mine – to come back to this. This day unchanged, exactly the same, waiting for me, so I will miss nothing, not one moment and so that nothing will arrive after me to mar this picture. I think of the people next to me and wonder if they wish the same impossible wish. The man is not coming back to the same anything ever again. Even though I am a complete stranger I know that is true. And my friend the artist . . . maybe she is not even so hopeful to wish coming back at all. Maybe she is realistic and just gives thanks. And the young couple, do they know to show gratitude? So easy to forget when you are young, in love, and everything seems easy. I am sure that they do not really understand that coming back to an island waiting and the same as it is today will be a miracle.

My penny falls fast. Bright copper sparkling in the last-of-summer sunrise before it slips silently below the waves.