Baton

Spring is track and field season, or so they say. I have never had the skill or competitive inclination to run in oval patterns, jump over mini-fences, free fall from poles or hoist big stones. I am content to participate in less vigorous activities and eat cookies.

Spring is also the season of teacher fatigue. After grinding away through three quarters of hope, mercy and prodding, reality sets in with a deafening thud. Students continue to hand in late assignments, if at all. Class clowns find their audiences ever ready for another show. Copy machines squelch out obscene messages such as "paper jam". E-mail inboxes fill up with lists of students who are traveling thither and yon. The number 2 pencil of standardized testing is replaced with computers, earbuds, passwords and fickle internet connections.  And, perhaps the most challenging of all is the realization that there are a few students who might not win the school game this round.

They are the students who go home with us in our heads. They take up mental space as we drive to and from work. They force us to play the "What If" game. What if I moved her closer to my desk, or if I worked with him during lunch or if I called his mother again or if we started a new behavior contract. If, if, if. The perplexing swirl of uncertainty grates away at the bedrock of progress and makes us weary with doubt.

Maybe, it is better to take off the teacher glasses and put on a coach's hat in the spring. The school year is really a lot like a relay race. Students are handed off to us by their guardians and their previous year's teachers. We read the rule books and practice our hand offs, we know how all of this should work. We grab the baton with gusto and begin the run. Run, breathe, run, breathe. Make it happen.

Then the variables set in. Unforeseen slippery spots appear on the track.  Headwinds buck our progress. Opposing teams get into our heads. Fingers feel numb to the baton. Legs feel like jello. Self talk turns incriminating. The finish line is nowhere to be found. Give it up, give it up. Gut it out, gut it out. What's it going to be?

Teachers gut it out. We know this race called a school year. Some variables can be controlled and others are out of our reach. We are handed batons of regulation size and we are handed batons that are too heavy or too slippery or too large. We start around the track, believing we can win and resist the urge to look back and ask for a new baton. Win or lose, we chug forward.

And when the time comes to hand off the baton to the next team player, we know that we had a part in whatever the scoreboard eventually displays. Maybe it isn't our turn to have the best career stats. Or maybe the variables will get the best of us on occasion. But, by gumby, we show up and we run. We run with the belief that races can be won and that no baton is ours to keep forever. Pass it on and take a breath.

Wild Plums

Fruit. The botanical temptress of both man and beast. Those of us living in the upper Midwest are all too aware of this fact. Yes, we can purchase squishy berries shipped in from Chile or sad little mangoes from...I don't know where, but the taste will never be the same as eating a peach or strawberry recently harvested from nearby locales. During the winter months, many of us resign ourselves to eating apples, oranges, apples, oranges and bananas. Occasionally, we might pick up a pear or two to spice things up and if we are really feeling exotic, we will go for a parsnip. Technically, not a fruit but they look dangerously able to keep scurvy at bay.

The most delicious fruit memories for me happened during my youth. The countryside was a perfect playground for foraging little vagabonds and we took full advantage of the seasonal opportunities. Our grove of trees included a few wild plum bushes, Prunus americana. Late spring saw the plum bushes sprouting sweetly fragranced white flowers with the promise of abundant fruit a few weeks later. Our daily trek to the mailbox at the end of the grove included a spot check on the plum situation. When the word went out that the fruit was ready to go, the urgency to beat the birds began. We brought out the little buckets and did our best to fill them fuller than our stomachs. No easy task. The branches on a wild plum bush are armed with thorns, demanding a deft hand and a keen eye. The first plum picked was ceremoniously popped into the mouth and the tart sweetness was declared delicious. We proceeded to pick and eat, pick and eat until our bellies could hold no more and our buckets had a reasonable amount of fruit for a jar or two of jam. In reality, wild plums are a thick skinned, mealy and sour fruit, hardly the food of gourmet distinction. We didn't know that. All we knew is that winter had released its glacial grip and spring had offered us a gift of juicy pleasure.

A little later in the season, the mulberry trees, Morus rubra, began sharing their bounty. Our jackpot tree was located down a rutted dirt road, through a barbed wire fence and across a few yards of prickly, stickly pasture land. The trek usually involved a jumbo-tired bicycle and a selfish doggedness to beat the rest of the siblings to the treasure trove. Occasionally, we brought a bucket with us but that was for prop purposes only. We all knew that the sticky sweet berries had only one destination and that was our stomachs. My mother was a wise woman and our attempts to convince her that the birds had gotten most of the fruit were trumped out by our blue stained fingers and shirts. I don't remember that she ever scolded us for our greediness but I also know that we never had an abundance of mulberry jam.

Our most prized culinary harbinger of spring wasn't a fruit at all. It was asparagus, Asparagus officinalis. The precious little spears nuzzled their way out of the cool ground and we watched them with an anticipation given to most newborns. When we could stand the wait no longer, the stalks were snapped gently at the base and gingerly taken up to the house for the first fresh green treat of the season. Usually the diners outnumbered the spears so each asparagus gem was parsed out with great care. To this day I enjoy the buttery "juice" left over from the boiled asparagus because that is often all that was left after the bowl had made it around the table to me. (Full disclaimer: My siblings often disagree with my table memories.)

We are just a few days away from the official vernal equinox and it is not too soon to get the fruit dessert recipes ready to go. Rest assured, we will enjoy every bite of what the sun has to offer.