Today is April 22, 2020.  Earth Day.   Many years ago, in what seems another lifetime as a High School English teacher,  I spent Earth Days trying to convince 5 periods of High School Seniors to love the poetry of Wordsworth, and Byron, and Shelley, and Keats.    These Romantic poets,  who wrote of love and promise and adventure and freedom and thought deeply about the human connection to each other and the world,  penned words that I just knew would appeal to Seniors.    As a teacher, I loved Earth Day.

Each day during April, as we neared the end of the school year,  I battled to keep my Seniors focused and working.  I wanted to pour every bit of knowledge I thought they would need right straight into their brains.  I wanted to arm them for what was next, whether it was college, technical school, or a job where they needed to be articulate and well reasoned.  I needed them to perfect that five paragraph essay with complex sentence structure and scholarly vocabulary that I knew was about to kick their behinds if they were headed to college.  There was never enough time and it stressed me out every year.   But it was Spring.  The arrival of the pollen, the warming air, the sunny days, and the promise of summer freedom that was sneaking into my classroom were all tough opponents.    Lots of days I know I lost the battle.

On Earth Days, they were Seniors and they felt glorious.    And I would start class reminding them of the Cavalier Poets and “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” and Carpe Diem.   I would try to keep their heads in the classroom with discussions using the hopeful, idealistic and adventurous themes of the Romantics.   After all, they were Seniors and the whole world was in front of them.  We talked about the joy of promise and imagination that Keats shows us in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn” – one of my very favorite poems.  We had lively debates about how “heard melodies are sweet, but unheard melodies are sweeter” and I encouraged them to dream and imagine and share those dreams with others.    We talked about their futures and their plans.  We reveled in their “Seniorness.”   We celebrated the joy they had earned in their accomplishments.  On Earth Day, I always felt like I won.

And on every Earth Day, I would end class with a reading of my all time favorite poem by William Wordsworth:  “The World is Too Much With Us.”   I feel this poem in my soul.  We are too much with the material things of the world.   We waste our power – the power to love and serve – by getting and spending  – or in today’s world by working and buying things we really don’t need and that don’t make us happy.    I wanted them to hear that even though he was a really old dead guy, Wordsworth had it right.   Time is not ours, but our powers are.  We should jealously guard them and use them well.   I always think of this poem on Earth Day.

On Earth Days, I asked my Seniors to stop for a moment and dream.   And pay attention.  And soak in the time they had with their friends, their families, their school and their community.   I reminded them that this was a season and it was coming to a close.   I begged them to write all about it in a journal so they would remember this time because one day they would struggle to remember it all.   I think some did.  Most didn’t.   But I know that I led most of them to consider and cherish what it meant to be in that season.  I tried to share with them what is really important in life.  On Earth Days my heart soared.

But on THIS Earth Day, 2020, for the first time in my life, my heart is so heavy for so many Seniors.   I don’t teach anymore, but I know some Seniors, and the Seniors I taught have their own Seniors now,  and I have a college Senior of my own.     And Earth Day for these special young people is unlike any Earth Day that has ever been.  Instead of a time filled with festivities and joy, and awareness of what is about to come for these young people, we are struggling in isolation and quarantine to figure out how to celebrate the transition that these Seniors are making to the next phase in their lives.  The chance for gathering and remembering and cherishing that they were looking forward to has been taken from them by a virus.   An invisible thief  has stolen their time.  Their special, once in a lifetime time.    How I wish for these Seniors the chance to gather and celebrate, and make music and really write their own ending to this time of being a Senior.    Instead, the pen is not in our hands, and I am so sad.

And so in my sadness I have to turn to the only place that will give me solace.  I think it appropriate to quote Isaiah 43:2.   “When you go through deep waters, I will be with you.”      The Romantics would approve of the nature analogy.   I know my God is here with us.   And I know we just need to moved by Him and not the world.   But it is hard.  And for an old English teacher who loves her poets, and who loves her words, there are just no words for how sad it is to celebrate Pandemic Earth Day 2020.

To my precious Senior Gamecock, Blair:  your accomplishments these last four years can never be dulled by the loss of our ability to celebrate them.   While these moments are nothing like what you dreamed they would be, the pen for the next part of your story is still provided by God and held by you.  We love you and are so proud of you.