Spring Break

I didn't just happen to fall into teaching by accident. I was well aware that becoming a teacher would more or less ensure me a lifetime of spring breaks, summer vacations and long holiday recesses. And the other thing is I just always liked school so much that I never really wanted to leave. There was a moment I had as an undergrad in Boulder that has stayed clear in my mind all these years. I was walking on campus, just a little bit off Broadway, across a stone bridge with the library way down the quad in the distance. The leaves were green and it was about 3pm. The sun was still above the Flatirons, sending its long diagonal rays through the branches. I might have been on my way to a creative writing class. I stopped on that little bridge and looked around and wished that somehow, someway I could figure out how to become a university teacher (not necessarily a professor, mind you). Of course, there was nothing I really excelled in enough to ever imagine being able to teach it, but I remember the feeling. Schools make me feel safe and calm, like I'm where I belong. I used to feel the same way up on the 5th floor of Hamilton Library at UH where they keep the Japanese collection.
That wish I made was one of those things I thought would never come true, but it did. Over the years I have noticed something kind of spooky about myself. I have wish power. Whenever I have really wished hard and long for something to come about, generally it has. Maybe I just wish on things that seem a sure bet to begin with. Or maybe I just wish powerfully.