Finishing

"My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still,

And there's a barrel that I didn't fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now."

- Robert Frost, "After Apple Picking"

The problem with teaching (she writes, knowing full well most educators would quibble over which problem, of the thousands we face, ranks highest tonight), the problem with teaching is that one never achieves the satisfaction of feeling finished. Every night I have to choose to be done, to set the books and papers aside incomplete, to cook or shop or rest a while. I can't remember the last time I've actually checked every item off of my (admittedly, optimistic) list. Prioritizing takes energy. And no matter how hard I work, undone tasks linger in the corners of my mind, coming out at night to fester in my dreams. 

I've improved, if you'll believe it, since my first year of teaching. I used to keep myself up until 1am and rise at 5am in order to grasp the elusive sensation of completion. Acknowledging the impossibility of this task has let me keep a better sleeping schedule, but not by much. Those of you who know me well know that I'm no Scrooge when it comes to self-indulgence. I take breaks. I procrastinate. I sleep in once or twice a month. But these brief  mental vacations are about as satisfying as a soma-holiday. The guilt never really disappears. There are the papers to read, to grade, to enter into the grade book, and of course the lessons to plan and the books to read and I really should do more research on the author this year.

 All I want tonight is complete freedom of mind.

But instead I am going to pack my teacher tote bag up and head to a coffee shop for the next three hours. 

"For I have had too much

Of apple-picking: I am overtired

Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all

That struck the earth,

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

Went surely to the cider-apple heap

As of no worth.

One can see what will trouble

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is."