Happy Mountain Day – and May There Be Many More

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When you're nineteen or twenty and living in a college dorm in western Massachusetts life is beautiful.  Especially in the morning.  There's something about a New England morning that feels like a new beginning.  If you're in the country, that's even more true.

So today, when I received my "Happy Mountain Day" message, I found myself hurtling back to those mornings- once a year – when the fall foliage was at its best and mid-terms were coming, when we'd awaken to the sound of bells and know it was Mountain Day.  Classes were canceled, box lunches were waiting in the dorm dining rooms, and the day was ours.  The idea was that we take our bicycles or the bus or someone's car and go see what a New England autumn was all about. 

Smith College was way before its time in many ways: educating women, educating the whole person (maintaining a healthy body AND a healthy mind), advocating for an equal role for all of us.  It's no accident that Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan along with Julia Child, Molly Ivins, Jane Harman, Madeleine l'Engle and hundreds of other remarkable women studied there. 

You didn't teach at Smith to get famous or publish best-sellers.  University professors got the attention, even though those who taught us were certainly as knowledgeable.  Somehow though, people who taught "girls" were considered lesser beings.  Of course there were rewards:  eager, grateful students who reveled in learning and arguing and growing toward success, students who returned to say thank-you, and a lovely, civilized environment.  When we wanted to start an African-American studies curriculum, we just found a professor who was willing to supervise us, and we had one.  Faculty members were expected to come to dinner when they were invited, and eat with a table of curious underclasswomen.  We spent enormous amounts of time hanging around with professors, and one another, figuring out everything from the meaning of pacifism to the puzzles that were Stan Brakhage films.

As women, we formed a sisterhood that lasts.  Meet another "Smithie" and there's a bond – a grateful understanding of what we've shared.  I know that happens in lots of schools, but women's colleges have a special understanding – because we made a choice to study with one another in a specific environment that enriched and strengthened us.

And Mountain Day?  Well, think about it.  Seasons, beauty, nature, a sense of priorities, self-education, fun, friendship.  All enhanced by ringing bells, box lunches and the oranges, reds and yellows of a New England fall.  Reminding all the ambitious, capable and very busy women who came to and left to remember, as they moved forward, to ring the bell once in a while, go outside and look at the leaves. 

SNOW — TOTO WE AREN’T IN LA ANY MORE!

Autumn_2007_2
Last week I took you to see this tree outside my office.  It was just lovely.  Then I went to LA and, as this storm was preparing to arrive, worked outside by the pool all afternoon.  Never have I been so aware of the good side of the left coast – where I lived so unhappily but have come to appreciate.

 
Snow_1107_road_2Back home tonight, which is Wednesday, it looks like this.  I seem to be on a real tear about seasons and changes.  I left a fiery display of falling leaves and returned just in time to welcome the magical silence that is my favorite part of an all-day snowfall.

I’m posting this on Friday, just before Shabbat.  Ending the week.
Thanking God.  Wishing I knew an angel named Earl. Remembering snowy
night time walks down Broadway with my kids.  And snow days.  And ski
lifts.

And back again to that old circle thing.  There isn’t much in life that doesn’t come in cycles, and if you observe the Sabbath, it begins at 4:30 in the depth of winter and 9:30 at the height of summer.  Jewish holidays too are built around harvest and planting, the moon and its cycles; it’s far more connected to the earth and its processes than I ever understood until we began living this observant life.  I wonder sometimes if, given my pleasure in the cycles and their passage, that pleasure isn’t yet another reason we ended up here.

Shabbat Shalom.

LAST OF THE LEAVES, LAST OF NABLOPOMO, HARRY CHAPIN AND LIFE

Autumn_2007I can see this out my office window.  In a couple of months it will be silvery with snow.  Months after that, long after these last end-of-autumn  leaves have fallen, new ones will bud in their place, and there will be a riot of color once again  — this time with blossoms.

I titled a post a few months ago "ALL MY LIFE’S A CIRCLE, SUNRISE TO SUNDOWN" as I wrote about a beautiful Bar Mitzvah.  For some reason, I’m feeling that way today.  Listen to Harry Chapin’s wonderful words:
All my life’s a circle
Sunrise and sundown
Moon rolls through the night time
Till daybreak comes around
All my life’s a circle
Still I wonder why
Season spinning ’round again
Years keep rolling by.

Seems like I’ve been here before
Can’t remember when
I got this funny feeling
We’ll all be together again
No straight lines make up my life
All my roads have bends
No clear cut beginnings
So far no dead ends.
CHORUS
I’ve met you a thousand times
I guess you’ve done the same
Then we lose each other
It’s like a children’s game
But now I find you here again
The thought comes to my mind
Our love is like a circle
Let’s go ’round one more time.

All my life’s a circle
Sunrise and sundown
Moon rolls through the night time
Till daybreak comes around
All my life’s a circle
Still I wonder why
Season spinning ’round again
Years keep rolling by.

Beautiful, no?  Tomorrow it will be December – NABLOPOMO will be over for another year and the year itself as fast approaching its final days.  We’ve been through health scares and crises, major adventures and small pleasures, moving and rewarding family time and some times not so great.  So I guess that’s why I’m kind of weepy, having loved the release of daily writing and aware of how fragile is life — and love — and laughter, ready to "go ’round one more time."

Here’s the song:


Have a good weekend.