Mocking Up

Several Springs ago, we had an alarm clock that woke us with a series of beeps - not the harsh, calamatous fright-fest most play now but an ever-louder, melodious serenade of a single, only slightly irritating note. One day I heard it going off and slapped the snooze, as I always did, for that extra seven minutes of sleep. But it didn't stop so I hit it again. And again. Always, always, the silly thing kept going, on and on, seemingly without end. I finally woke fully and realized it wasn't coming from my clock but from my open window. Outside, in a ragged cherry tree, a mockingbird had picked up its song and run with it, waking us fully every dawn until we had to close up for air conditioning.

I feel like that bird - an imitator, a fake. I don't know what I'm doing any more.

I'm not a landscaper or a gardener, but I'm acting as if I am (I couldn't even play one on TV, I'm that bad) - seriously, though I'm picking, nibbling, digging away at the beds in the yard (making progress) my lack of talent is starting to show. The house, too, while started well this winter, is just not going as planned. I'm doing the best I can but I'm intimidated by the scope of it, the multitude of colors and skills and details involved, not to mention the aloneness of the work. And after fourteen years of preparing students for finals, APs, and college entrance exams, I think I need to head to a "real" job - in part because the in-house bureaucracy is growing (which I hate), but mostly because I don't feel as effective as I used to (which I hate more). The clarity of it all is disheartening.

Sigh. I know (hope) I'll pop out of this when my schedule clears up, when the trip is over, when everything works out somehow (even if for the worst). But for now I feel ... not like the bird, really, but more like the song she sang, an imitation of the real - an imitation of a mechanical real, at that. A mock-up of bits of other people I set in place, pretending that it's me.

And yet ...

There was this moment today, when the newsletter from the Crater of Diamonds State Park arrived in my emailbox and raised a serious crop of goosebumps. According to the release, two days ago someone found a perfect, flawless, 2.35-carat (rough) white diamond in their field on Tuesday - and not just anyone but a down-on-his luck someone, a guy who had prayed for help for him and his family, a guy who saw the glitter-stone lying on the ground two rows away and just ... picked it up. He's calling it "Faith." My first thought, then, was, "if he can do it, so can I."

My second thought, now, is ... maybe imitation isn't such a bad thing after all.