View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

It’s September. The leaves on our big ash tree in the back yard have started to turn yellow. The soybeans are ripening. The hummingbirds are frantically flittering about drinking the sugar water I set out for them. And the acorns are falling, hitting the table on our patio with big plinks.

The squirrels are running around, gathering up as many acorns as they can. Since we have three big oak trees on our front lawn, there are many for them to pick. But they are efficient and every day there are noticeably less acorns under our feet. I presume the squirrels eat well these days, since I never see them at the bird feeders any more. But I know they also store the nuts away for the lean months of winter. And not all of the acorns are found, since we have little oak trees growing quite far from the big oaks.

Acorns falling. What a pleasant sound. At the cabin, I hear them making loud sounds on the neighbor’s metal roof. Sounds always take me back. Back to the time I worked as a teacher. And acorns falling was the sign that school was about to start.

I loved teaching. I loved imparting knowledge and making a difference in somebody’s life. I loved interacting with young people. I loved starting them out in foreign languages where progress can be measured easily. But I also loved summer vacation. Slow mornings with coffee on the deck overlooking the loons that delight us every day. Afternoons with friends or alone in a chase lounge reading. Sunsets late in the evening. And no papers to grade or lesson plans to write.

So when the acorns started hitting the neighbor’s roof. I felt a knot in my stomach. My life of leisure was over. I had to again become a responsible adult. I had to get up early, commute 40 miles. Be at the top of my game every day, because if I didn’t, the kids would become restless and I would have discipline problems. I truly hated that. And I always worried that I had lost my touch over the summer. Our summer vacation is almost three months. That is a long time. And what if I had forgotten my German or how to teach it?

I always went one or two weeks before workshop. To prepare my room, to think through the curriculum, to get my class lists and above all, to have alone time in my room to prepare my brain for the busy season I knew would start soon. But despite all this, I was nervous. The night before, I didn’t sleep well. What if the alarm didn’t go off?

And then, the big day was there. I stood before my students in my first-day-of-school dress and tried to look positive and upbeat. My first year students also looked nervous. After all, they were about to learn a foreign language for the very first time. Would they succeed? Would it be hard? Or would they make a fool out of themselves, a condition dreaded by all, but especially teenagers.

But for most of us, the year went well. Most of them did learn German. But many of them when I meet them now, have forgotten much. But some haven’t. Some have moved to Germany. Some use German in their work. Some are German teachers.

Acorns everywhere. Some do turn into oaks.