Dusting off the year that was

It started yesterday, the white puffs flurrying down like feathers from medieval angels molting from the stratosphere. It was not much but enough to make my foothold on the icy ground a bit shaky while I carried the potted plants from my classroom after my last class session. The school shuts off the radiator on the last day of the semester until the spring semester opens. That’s eight weeks in the cold that even the sturdy spider plants could not possibly endure.

I carried my plants in one of those oversized shopping bags that boutiques like to provide. I live only about four blocks from my classroom so I did not bother to bring plastic or towel to cover the plants. But after 15 minutes outside in between warm rooms, the plants resembled weeklong leeks in the fridge, or newly harvested kelp from the icy waters, all desperately crying out to be cooked and consumed, or be thrown away. After two more trips, half of my study/living room now looks like a solarium of the Chicago botanical garden.

This dusting off exercise in our mind is not, however, our wilting in the Dong Bei cold, a consequence of retirement from the formal teaching service. Rather, it rehearses my markings and turning points of the past year.

I am a historical figure, by upbringing and choice. I love history—the facts-based reminiscing of the past so that the future does not come as too much of a scare nor a surprise. I no longer live the present with fear of the unknown, cowed and resigned; history gives me the confidence to live each day like it was the only day of the rest of my life! At every moment, I encounter the past, present, and the future, all at once!

But my gray matter is accustomed to the rhythm of a 365-day trip of the planet around the sun so I dance with the crowd in Gregorian patterns and come now to the completion of another Gaia revolution around Sol.

I made two trips to Honolulu this year to visit 93-year-old mother, diagnosed to be frail of bones requiring 24/7 attention at a medical facility. My fealty was made more intense by her mothering smile even in the midst of her frailty. She reminded me of the longevity that is programmed in my genes that I abused with tar and nicotine in my youthful lungs, so I am prudent in my life’s covenant. I lopped off almost a decade from my statistical staying power.

This year, I lived too much at the edge of hoping against hope, and adjusted my radar accordingly. Wayward was a word applied to describe personal fidelity in relationships (playful is my term), and though my monastic mendicare these past years understood that being solitary is not a lonely journey, I pined too much for a certain company, though much more in the romance of the imagination rather than in the plane of earthy reality. I have since distanced myself from the cuff and cusp of illusion.

Aging got dramatically demonstrated as the jowl of a second chin and the sag of a previously firm and rounded heine became more pronounced. I experienced loss of breath while navigating four flights to my classroom. It has become a federal effort to reach down and sock my feet warm in the cold. My hair now blooms like Jack Nickolson’s electrified mane on a bad hair day!

My residence does have an elevator, which thankfully assists my knees. I live on the 11th floor, but some of my students reside in dorms that are 10 ten floors without elevators. Just imagining how they strive up and down the stairs daily exhausts my faculties. So this year, I shifted to the last scheduled 17-year retirement phase of my life’s odyssey. I no longer protest when a young thing offers me her seat on the bus!

The university delivered the coup de grâce when it decided to no longer hire teachers over 65 years old. Approaching the sunset of my years, I signed loan papers on a dwelling with my host family; I get the use of a room on a first floor three-bedroom apartment near the university, at a fifth of cost. This will be home base to treks to Irkutsk and Tashkent in the next few years. Friends and family can also visit me should they travel to my northeast corner of China.

As the snow flurries drifted down this morning on my way to my last day in class, I ran into one of the grounds’ maintenance men sweeping the snow off one of the walkways. Equipped with dried twigs attached to a pole, a homemade broom, he thoroughly swept the white cover off the red-bricked pathway. 

I stopped to catch his attention, looked him in the eyes, and said “thank you” in the only Zhongwen I can decently pronounce. He was surprised that I would bother, and recognizing me as the foreign teacher who does not speak the language, he broke into a toothless but winsome smile.

I turned around and before entering the building, took a deep breath, cast a broad look around me including another glance on the bent but proud worker, and to no one in particular, uttered, xie xie! For his life and mine this past year, I wrapped it up in Peace! Equanimity and tranquility to all.