My Car as Archaelogical Dig

     Laurel and Hardy move items to the car.
       It's the end of the week and the end of the day as I roll the cart with the easel and various papers and materials out to my car. The windy day pushes things around and as I unload stuff from my car to make room for the easel I look up to see the cart sliding into the parking lot. Paper's fly. Laurel and Hardy are here, chuckling as I run around.
     Then in my moment of desperation a "molach" an angel appears at my side.
"Looks like you need some help!" the smiling young man says. He is the husband of one of my colleagues. Quickly we load the easel in, the hatch shuts. I gather up the papers and materials. My kind helper rolls the cart back to the door and I push everything in and shut the doors.

Time rolls on. I drive around with these archaelogical layers of memory and eventually find time to unload. But often I am tired and the stuff rides around with me as I go to my various places.
 I glance at the layers of memory.

Going back in time I see the long piece of material that was once the Great Wall of China for the Chinese Opera years ago...years when we had so many more students and every year we had a huge Chinese Opera. We printed it with large sponges on this light porous material. Back then we would have an evening of Chinese folk tales orchestrated by Shira our wonderful music teacher.
Two classes alternated playing instruments as the scenery shifted and the marvellous silk paintings done by the students shimmered. Those were our glory days in art and music and for the school. In art we would sometimes create boulders for a play out of papier mache or paint long, long silk banners of the sea. Our Chinese calligraphy on rice paper decorated the halls. As we painted our Chinese calligraphy in art chinese music played. I told the children we would soon have a visitor " Peach Ling Sun!" a Chinese princess from ancient times would visit.
     The children knew it was me of course " Your shoes are the same as Anita's and so is your watch!"hahahaha....Just a few weeks ago I had an abbreviated Chinese unit with my class of six. Peach Ling Sun arrived and somehow this sometimes rambunctious class calmed down and we had chinese tea and a pleasant time. So there in the car is another layer of archival memory embodied by my flowered chrysanthemum robe that I wore.

         Some items get dispersed...the large model of a 3 masted boat is now something my brother paints....the art games are coming in handy with my friend who suffers memory loss..and other things get thrown out.

    Piece by piece I gather up the past and put it in a box that lands in my car and eventually my garage..or with wisdom makes it to be used by someone else.

Eventually everything becomes the province of memory and all those moments that were once so lively and creative become relics, totems of a time gone by.
      The cabinets will empty. The shelves cleared out. Piece by piece I will discard, keep or recycle my 28 years of teaching and memories.
    The chrysanthemum robe will return to the back of my closet. The Great Wall of China printed with large sponges will make a good Hide A Mess cloth...I will use the easel in front of my house to advertise my occasional art sales...all going round and round as time rolls by.

As Time Unrolls

It appears my many years of teaching children are coming to an end. I start here at the end, which is also the beginning..yes, I start my musings here amid the small children working on their Seder plates...with wooden tools and a garlic press that squishes clay...we make our small handheld Seder plate for this year
......and so the years roll back to the ancient story of liberation and the Seder plate holds those symbols...and so the years roll forward to this tender moment with children using clay from the earth that they pound and mold into their shape of meaning. ...their Seder plates are small...the dishes get pummeled and wet with water in their hands...carefully our new student smooths the clay with a round sponge until the circles disappear and I write her name again in the soft moist clay..honestly some of the clay disks no longer look like Seder plates...yes, there are some circles and yes that clay squeezed out in the old metal garlic press does sort of look like Haroset on the Seder plate..but what matters is that these plates are held by the children and shaped by them with little intervention by me. once they understand what they are making and why.
Over the years I honed my philosophy of teaching by learning when to guide and when to let go. I set have learned to wisely step back to let my students be their creative selves with encouragement and support.  Like holding onto a kite string that reaches into the lovely places. What has evolved is individual creative expression.  So, yes there are unusual knobs on that plate and hacked lines on another. They don't look the same.  They are each unique and theirs to keep.
    As I write I gaze out the window, snow bilows by. The yards are white. Is it winter or spring? Hard to say. But as we shape these ageless plates with places for
      the egg
      the haroset
      the bone
      the bitter herb
      and the spring greens
And so with this work, we know for sure that spring is coming and these plates will find their way to a Seder table..laden with glasses for wine, Elijah's cup, bowls of haroset and a regal gleaming Seder plate....or perhaps these carefully made plates will remain in a backpack...all wrapped up....yes, that happens too.
      .I smile knowing that in countless households the lovely clay pieces made over the last 21 years will grace tables...the Seder plate with frogs, the crossing of the Red Sea laver pitcher for hand washing, the small triangular dishes for haroset, the tear shaped dishes for salt water..All that and more will come out to grace countless Seder tables.
     As for me, I sit there,hands full of gooshy mooshy clay smoothing out the edges of the small Seder plates..just big enough to fit into a 4 years olds hands...and I remember back to the beginning of my teaching here as time mighty time rolls and unrolls like a large Torah roll wrapping around me with meaning and memory.