Building Sandcastles

As a child, I spent a lot of time at our state's beaches.  I have so many happy memories in that setting: Splashing in the water, picnic lunches with my mom, scouring the shoreline for treasures.  And, of course, building sandcastles.  My constructions were reliably simple, my enjoyment more about the vivid stories I'd create in my imagination as I built.  Although my castles were humble, there was an inevitable sadness I felt the moment my creation began to collapse.  I knew when I began that this wasn't a "forever" kind of activity, yet there was always an unnamed sense of heartbreak in watching it wash away.  I felt the same small pang of pain watching snowmen melt in our back yard.  The making was fun, but it came with the cost of a goodbye.  With the perspective of time, I can see the gift in these tiny losses.  I can see that they exposed me to grief in manageable ways, gradually helping me build an understanding of what it means to let go of something you love, helping me grapple with a much bigger question - If you know it's going to go away, do you still want to make it?

That quirky young girl on the beach, lost in her daydreams and feeling her big feelings, went on to a life in the performing arts.  For my undergraduate career and the first half of my twenties, I continued this theme of creating impermanent art.  This time, it felt exciting, rather than sad. There was a sense of urgency and intimacy in being an actor.  There were no edits, anything could happen, and only those people sharing the space of the theatre would ever experience it.  When the curtain came down, the art was gone, never to be replicated exactly the same way again.  Now a young adult, I was able to see that temporary art achieves its own unique kind of beauty, made all the more precious because it is fleeting.  I rarely knew how my work on the stage impacted someone in the audience, whether they walked away feeling better (or at least changed) for having had the experience.  But if even one person felt more alive, more themselves, more connected with humanity after seeing something I helped to make?  It was an offering of my energy and resources that absolutely seemed worth it.  

It sometimes feels like a lifetime has passed since those sunny days on the beach, those long nights rehearsing.  And yet, my life now as an early childhood teacher somehow feels like the most natural place in the world to have landed.  I still delight in creating, feel my emotions deeply, am enthralled by the power and beauty of human connection.  Like those gracious audiences who gave me their attention over the years, my students will leave me without being able to tell me what our experience together meant to them.  There will be no tangible record of what they have learned, no grades or papers to document my efforts. 

If we're being honest, I know they may not remember me at all.

One of my students had his last day in our classroom this week before moving to a different school.  As we wished him well in our final morning meeting together, I felt grateful for my time with him, for the ways he helped me grow.  I felt proud of my work with him.  I felt happy for his new chapter, excited to see what comes next for him in life's great journey.  And, sure enough, I felt that familiar sense of sadness in letting go.  Would he carry with him some of the things he learned with us?  Would he recall that his teachers loved him?  Will he go out into the world better for having had this moment we shared?  

I allowed the feelings to wash over me like the tide.  I sat with the unanswered questions. 

​Then, I picked up my shovel.  I began again.