Yesterday, as I was blowing hot air into my cold cupped hands on the way into school, Gonzo Sensei yelled across the parking lot in Japanese, “it’s winterish!” Only last Saturday I was wearing a t-shirt, lounging around the banks of a river in sockless feet, but starting Monday I’ve been pulling on the wool layers, not even bothering to throw a t-shirt in my bag in case it gets warm. It’s been raining off and on for two days, so K-town looks like it has had a nubby grey sweater pulled over its head. It was completely dark by 5:30 last night, so we pulled the drapes and turned on our new heaters and Johnathan worked out and I watched tv in the glow of their orange, metallic heat.
During Monday’s cleaning time I had a new crew of three girls and they stared at me blankly. “How do we clean?” one of them asked. I explained how we straighten the desks and sweep the rows and they set to work–silently. My crew before couldn’t stop asking me about how Johnathan and I met, how tall I was, if my hair was its natural color. We were so giggly and paid so little attention to detail that their homeroom teacher, Green Tea Sensei, often popped her head in the door to make sure we were working. Usually we were not. But my new crew is either feeling the depression of the drizzly grey world or they’ve been sent to whip the English room into shape, to clean out the little dust bunnies on the bookcases, to pound the yellow chalk out of the erasers. Time will tell.
Then, this morning as I walked the hall down to the teacher’s room I noticed the flower club’s new November arrangements. They used bright red gerber daisies as big as my fist and redish dogwood that leans to the left of their vases like spikes. It’s a bright contrast against the windows that are only letting in faint grey light, and it looks like someone has lit a string of red lanterns. It feels like I’m inside on a windy, rainy day and up and down the hallway little fires are glowing, bright enough that should I stand in front of them, fingers wiggling, it would feel a little less like winter.
