Commentary

Morning Routine

by Joyce Hannah

My commute to school takes less than ten minutes and I usually encounter the same circumstances each day. Over the years, I have noticed only a few changes.

For the past 25 years, my path has crossed with the bus drivers who have dropped off high school kids and are beginning the elementary school route. We wave with mutual respect, although we have rarely spoken except then I taught their children and they ferried mine. They know my car and learn to recognize me when I buy a newer model. None of us changes vehicles very often.

Pausing at the traffic light at the crest of a small hill allows me to look around for a few moments. Two small children with lunch boxes wait for their bus at just about this time. A frisky black lab romps by their side. Every day.

Past the light stands a rickety house near the most perfect oak tree I have ever admired. Because it is at a small intersection, there are no obstructions to the full light and no power lines that require the pruning of interfering branches. In every season the tree is glorious – bare in the winter, fresh in the spring then densely dark green followed by autumn brilliance.

Emerging from the dilapidated house is a teenager, hair wet from the shower. Bowed under an oversized blue parka and defeated expression, he hurries to school.

A traffic cop at the turn into the high school driveway, a bottleneck right before classes begin, takes a theatrical stance. His movements are big during his brief moments on stage center. Before Christmas he wears a Santa Claus hat.

To the right is a service station where a few students, officially “off campus,” huddle together behind some trees to share a morning cigarette. Shivering as breathy smoke rises overhead, they think no one notices their rendezvous.

I teach. I teach the wet-haired boy still enveloped by his oily parka. I teach the smokers who remain pungent throughout the day.

I watched as the two small children grew taller and became less interested in the presence of a thick black lab with white whiskers. Their patient nanny. Now the driveway is empty.

Gradually the decrepit house decayed and developed a hole in the roof. Could the boy with the blue parka have moved into the back room with his mother until repairs were made? I thought I caught glimpses of him in the school corridors and his rusted bike was still lying next to the tire planter on his front lawn behind the ’81 pickup. But when the wrecking ball demolished the structure and the bulldozers leveled the property, I knew he had moved away a long time before.

Some years ago blue balloons tied to a mailbox about half way to work caught my attention. For a few days they took me by surprise as I came around the bend. “It’s a boy.” Later a white fence was erected along the roadside. Pink balloons.

The demolished house was replaced by a pile of chipped brush which seemed to grow each week. Perhaps a new structure would be built under the perfect oak tree which seemed quite isolated in the barren space. I hope its roots hadn’t been disturbed.

In the early morning sun on cold fall mornings, the pile of chips steamed. The vapor mixed with the ground fog and created an eerie pall over the road. The mound swelled to a bank which became a small dark hill of wood chips. In the dwindling winter light, I imagined a volcano, an antediluvian smoldering, a portal to Hades. I knew enough about spontaneous combustion to hope for a full-blown blaze to sanctify the ground.

But, instead, dozens of spindly cedars were planted along the roadway to obstruct the view of the mountainous chip pile which had been joined by numerous heaps of soil. Even though the trees were planted closely together, too closely to survive, they were dwarfed by the dark humps of wood and earth.

I learned that the lot was purchased as a repository for such materials and recently heavy equipment and cement slabs joined the piles near the oak tree.

Blue and pink balloons, like seeds, yielded a boy and girl who waited at the foot of their driveway with their dad, a town police officer. He was the cop who had worked at the high school and occasionally came to fetch the smokers who annoyed the service station owners with silly acts of vandalism. When shepherding his children, the officer would be wearing his uniform but from time to time he wore casual clothes and a sleepy look. Sometimes he had cowlicks. And a few times both he and his wife watched proudly, hand in hand, as the children paid attention to the puppy with a red bandana.

The flamboyant crossing guard left town, his departure lamented in the town newspaper. Our seniors dedicated their yearbook to him. For a year we had a female officer pulling traffic duty; clearly she was paying her dues before a more prestigious position in a patrol car. She was valiant, if less animated, and covered her Smoky Bear hat with plastic protection in the rain. Now we have an elderly fellow who is diligent, joyless and serious-minded, but seems to amplify the morning congestion. Although everyone complains and uses him as an excuse to be late to class, I wonder if the volume of traffic has just increased. I feel sorry for him and give him a half-hearted wave, but I don’t think he notices.

After our school renovation and the change in management at the service station, the smokers gather in clutches in the obscure areas of the school’s perimeter. They are still skinny and wear black leather jackets. The political correctness of non-smoking makes them look desperate and retro.

And I teach.

(Joyce Hannah is an art teacher at Newtown High School)