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.