Sweet memory.  In about a week, I will say farewell to an institution at which I've taught for close to twenty years.  It's bittersweet.  I loved it, loved it immensely, but felt and realized it was time to move on, to move on to other teaching and writing opportunities.
     Impending departures of course carry with them massive loads of nostalgia, freighted as they are with the weight of memory.  I cannot measure these memories, cannot fully assess their form or meaning.  I can only remember and recall them, returning to them repeatedly, turning them over and over again in the ever shifting sands of my mnemonic shoals, then tucking them away once more into my constantly forming folds of my cerebrum.  That they have impact is without question, that they matter is certain, that they make a difference seems patently clear.
     Talking with some of my soon to be former students the other night, I caught a glimpse anew of the enormity of the teaching vocation, the incredible privilege it comprises.  To engage and deliberate with young and growing minds, to travel with them into new adventures and horizons, to open their hearts to things they have not heard before, to shape the generation to come:  it's a tremendous responsibility.
     And burden.  But a good one.  As William Worth, a seventeenth century British divine (so some were called in those days) once remarked about his vocation, "This was I was born to do."  Though I'm not sure whether teachers are born, made, or a combination of both, I do feel, and countless students can attest, in teaching I have found my "place" in the world.
     Ah, to teach forever!