Dear first day of the semester,

Thank you for taking it a little easy on me. For instance, thank you for sending willing students in the direction of the literary magazine staff, and thank you for arranging for the literary magazine class to be my first and only class today.

Thanks also for allowing me to have good conversations with multiple cherished colleagues. And I appreciate the fact that I was able to help several students find their classes, or the art department office, and to advise them informally on classes they might take to fulfill their, y'know, generals. As the kids like to say. It made me feel useful, and kind, just as I like to feel when I am at my place of employ, and elsewhere--everywhere, really. Today was a good example of that.

And thanks, dear first day of the semester, for helping me see that it would be a good idea for my son to drop me off and pick me up at the curb by my building, so he could use my car in the interim. I might have fretted, but this arrangement meant that I did not have to park on a very very busy parking day. And that meant I could wear my tall shoes, and not whine about it. Much.

I think it would be awesome, first day, if you would share your techniques for staging my day with the rest of the days of the semester. Show them how it's possible to have just one thing at a time happen, instead of an onslaught of crazy. And show them how, when just one thing at a time is happening, even a little bad news or unsettling vibrations are less like a crisis and more like a topic of conversation. Crises are bad, first day, I think we can all agree on this, unless we are revolutionaries, and then crises are opportunities. I get that. But I am not ready for such an opportunity, not yet. Not when the afternoon sun bestowing itself upon me while I waited at the curb is still hot. A hot with an autumnal tinge, but still: hot. Let's have the revolution in, like, October. And maybe we won't need one at all, not if we just take one thing at a time, and have a conversation while wearing cute shoes.

That is all I ask.

Sincerely,

htms