After nine years, my early morning job of walking the grandkids to school daily comes to an end. The youngest will graduate from the nearby elementary school, and exhilarating walks in the crisp air are over. It was a fine wake-up call, stepping into a shiny new day, and walking briskly, our speed adapted to our degree of lateness. (What colossal relief to hear the first bell after I’d already begun the walk home!) The skies were sometimes marbled, sometimes bright blue and on a few rainy days, we popped open our umbrellas.
At times, we’d walk with high anticipation—a special event at school, a trip planned for the weekend–or reflection after an experience: “What was your favorite thing in Seattle?” Sometimes we’d carry gingerly: the diorama, the Valentine box, the bouquet for Teacher Appreciation Week. Always, the backpack and the water bottle, sometimes the mittens, hats and coats.
Especially in the early years, we were attuned to every snail inching along the sidewalk, to diamonds left by rain in the long grass, to a necklace of jewels along one fence when the sun would strike the dew, to the “fairy decorations for a ball” when moisture would shine in intricate cobwebs. Underlying the sadness of the ending is deep gratitude that we survived vulnerable, dangerous years with only minor scrapes. A couple times, she or I almost fell, but we saved each other—luckily we were holding hands or looping arms. No car accidents, school shootings or major illnesses, just the usual flus and colds and Covids.
It’s appropriate that June 8 marks the feast of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jesuit poet who captured the precious, fleeting nature of human life. He’d grin with appreciation for our rhythm on a foggy day as we marched along chanting, “One misty, moisty morning/When foggy was the weather/I chanced to meet an old man, clothed all in leather.” He describes eloquently the scenery we might’ve taken for granted: “the azurous hung hills are his [Christ’s] world-wielding shoulder” or “my heart in hiding/ Stirred for a bird—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!”
And above all, he’d appreciate the nostalgia a grandparent feels for the small, wispy-haired child, reluctant to part in the morning, and running pell-mell to me at pick-up time, bellowing, “Grammy!” Hopkins’ “Spring and Fall” is dedicated to a young girl named Margaret, who’s sad about autumn leaves falling. He concludes with advice not only for her, but for a newly grounded grandparent:
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same…
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Ah yes, but not a bad way to spend nine years?
Kathy Coffey 