I'm late I'm late and it's all important

Late, late, late: name of the game this time of year. No matter how much is cut, there's always too much to do. The eyes of teachers everywhere glaze over. We can't help it. We have to do more and better for the kids so we work longer hours than contracted.

This week my students performed, and Opera Piccola presented a staged reading of my adaptation of "The Grinch" at our Second Sundays play reading/open mic. My vehicle became a packed junkyard of scenery frames, bags of props and costumes, sacks of food and pizza boxes-- not to mention piles of papers, and handkerchiefs for my cold. Oakland blurred by my car windows as I dove (yes a car and its driver can dive) from home to office to rehearsals to performances to food stores to copy stores to schools to... to.. my 94 year old mom's "retirement community" building. I alternately froze or dripped sweat as I stumbled with my stuff from facility to car to facility to car. Load in, load out, drop off, pick up. Hurry, hurry, we start singing at 4:00 and it's 3:45 and we're in traffic! Call them! No, cell phone out of battery! We forgot the necklace prop! Use anything, here's a string!

Relationships are intense this time of year, vacillating from love to anger in a blink. After an acrimonious argument about whether or not to perform their puppet skit about substance abuse, my students figured out how to solve their problem. The result convulsed the audience, which grasped the stern moral of the scene while laughing hysterically. Although they refused to take my advice on the scene, my students ended up doing exactly what I would have wanted. At an elementary school, a teacher who had previously seemed irritated from overwhelm when I showed up, greeted me this time with a cheery, "We're ready for you." A parent rages on the phone about wanting to kick her rebellious teenager out of the house.

What does the background mantra of "enjoy the season" mean in this whirl, where there is no time to stop and recognize? Moments of joy or tears emerge without warning. Hearing Maurice Sendak speak on the radio about a young French girl dying of cancer who can laugh at Sendak's drawings and comfort her mother in the same moment. Standing outside the Masonic Home in my caroling costume on a break, feeling hot spiced cider glow down my throat. A young boy who came late to the performance crying out "Oh, please!" when we asked him if we should do "The Grinch" play again so he could see it. Embracing fellow artists and students after a performance, feeling a happiness of closeness that flies in the face of overwhelm, loss or grief.