Morituri Te Salutant

It’s happened long enough to be a pattern now. I’m at last taking notice. The beginning of summer break plays tricks on me. Even though I’m always dog tired and could use the rest, the instant cessation of teaching is jarring and consistently leaves me feeling a little down. A little bluesy. I have all this time to contemplate my choices from the past school year and also my identity as it is separate from being a teacher. I meander. I float from one coffee shop to the next like a disembodied spirit with a few loose ends left here on earth.

Google says it’s best to maintain a routine in the summer months. But don’t go crazy. But also don’t do nothing. Do enough something such that you are compelled to get out of bed every morning. Take on a small but manageable project. Don’t stop brushing your teeth. Avoid the temptation to be slovenly.

I recently realized that this happens to me on a smaller scale once a week throughout the entire year. On Tuesdays in my little gym class, James runs us through the wringer for 38 minutes. By then, my voice is in my panting. I lean over and brace myself on my knees and say things like “Eh!” James says, “What have I told you about leaning over? Do you want to pass out?” I stand up and stack my arms atop my head and respond with “Eh!”

We then enter the cool-down phase, which James calls “core time” and I call seven minutes of personal reflection. We lie on our backs and do things like crunches and “thigh sliders.” By now I’m a disheveled wreck. My shirt is hanging off one shoulder and most of my hair has come out of my hair tie. On my back, curling myself towards my knees, I’m given a close-up view of the mole on my right leg. That gets me to thinking about blemishes or individuality, which then leads to thoughts about my purpose on this earth. The buzzer goes off and we all switch to leg lifts, which strain my lower back. So I start thinking about future, unknown pains. And then of growing old.

“Let’s go, Sara,” James will say, and I realize I’ve actually slowed down or even stopped because of all that inner reflection. There have been one or two times when James has looked up from his own leg lifts and seen me just lying there— supine—feet, legs, hips rotated outwards like a doll made to sit on the ground that has fallen backwards. I’m not doing nothing. I’m thinking about human existence. But James reminds me that I pay too much money to just lie there. I admire the man, I really do. He put a sign on the wall that says, “Let me find out,” because people had been taking bottled water without paying.

James has two sons, aged four and one, named Apollo and Maximus. When James’ wife was pregnant with Maximus, the baby at one point had a 10% chance of making it to full term. “James just kept saying he’d make it,” his wife said. And then Maximus made it. James and I have never talked about religion, but once I joked about his forgetfulness being a symptom of dementia, and he called down lingo I recognized from my childhood in the charismatic church. “I rebuke those words,” he said to me. I felt like quite the idiot.

The buzzer rings again and we start doing “scissors,” as James calls them, although he and I disagree on how scissors work. In his version, you lie on your back, lift your legs off the ground, and walk on air as if you’re a wind-up toy knocked over. I asked James if he thought it wouldn’t be more like scissors for the legs to go east to west rather than north to south. Thus allowing the legs to mimic the shearing motion more freely without crashing one’s heels on the ground. James said that I had never used scissors in my life, which was unfounded and a little hateful. I said I was a left-handed child using right-handed scissors back in kindergarten, thanks very much. James coaches fighting and has even entered the ring himself a few times. He goes by the name of “The Figure 4,” which is a kind of leg lock that I guess is one of his signature moves. But also he rents out bouncy castles to birthday parties on the weekends.

Our last exercise of the class is sit-ups. Always sit-ups. James invites us to use them as a stretch, meaning we’re allowed to lie on the ground a little longer without him yelling at us. We stretch our arms above our heads and then gradually sit up and reach for the feet and wring the lactic acid out of our quads. By this time, my contemplation has ended. I feel neither old nor young nor particularly special nor a grain of sand on the beach of the universe. I’ve returned to that moderate place where life simply trucks along.

I appreciate having this weekly experience because, in a sense, those first few cool-down days after school has ended can be quite unpleasant. My feelings and my logic are briefly at cross purposes. I’m excited about what the summer holds for me even as there is a catch in my throat. Something like yearning almost folds me in half. I think, “What a horrible waste of time all this lamenting is. If I keep this up, the summer will be over in a heartbeat,” and yet I can’t help it. There is a season—a solid week—of pining. Like maybe the ol’ subconscious, made for heaven, is once again disappointed to not find a fulfillment for all that striving. The school doors close and the body goes, “Wait, where is God and paradise?” And then it finds out it has to limp along for a little while longer. Rest. Train for another battle. Salute another Caesar.

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In the spirit of staying busy—as Google has advised me—I’m offering a little extension of thanks to those of you who have so generously supported me through paid subscriptions. If you’re a paid subscriber, I’d love to encourage your own writing process by offering to proofread/edit anything you’re working on, up to 2,000 words per month. If this turns out manageable for me, I’d love to keep doing this beyond the summer break. We’ll see how it goes.

Just email me a Google Doc of your work to scbannerman@mac.com along with any specific things you’d like me to look for. I learned that even the great George Saunders has an editor who glances over his weekly Substack before he publishes. Everyone can use a second pair of eyes.