Turn, Turn, Turn

“There is a season, turn, turn, turn.”

It was the first day of Spring in English 101. My 9th grade English teacher (who was very cool for playing Sanctus Real during our exams per my class’s request) was evidently a fan of the Byrds. The Ecclesiastes-based tune bounced down the halls in the typical happy 60s fashion, proclaiming truths not even a group of moody freshman could deny:

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

I’ve been feeling the changing of seasons this month. The coming of my 24th birthday, and my sister’s reminder of my approaching my mid-twenties reminded me that I am no longer that Freshman girl who lived in ripped jeans and Converse and hadn’t yet learned how to be brave and say what she was really thinking. Next month, my very long Covid summer ends and I begin teaching high school English, which is such a trip given the fact that I practically laughed in my mom’s face ten years ago when she asked if I wanted to be a teacher like her. Turns out that my English degree will be put to use and I will join the ranks of English majors with actual jobs. ~~Take that, meany high school advisor.~~

In other news, three weeks ago I had my first in-person Bible study in months. The five of us sat out in the church parking lot, Bibles in hand, laughing so hard we made our fold-out camping chairs creak. I felt like a poor conversationalist as the tedious weeks of Zoom calls had made me accustomed to unnatural breaks in conversation from loss of internet (the WiFi in my town is pretty ghetto).

When we met in person, I didn’t know what to say or what to do with my arms, which longed to swing themselves around these people I had missed so much. There was no room to hide behind five minutes of, “Can you hear me now?” and let me tell you, that was so refreshing. It was the end of a very long season of being apart, and while I did feel like a jerk the whole time for bringing Hawaiian barbecue to our meeting (I got dinner a little late) it was still a lovely start.

If you’ve never had an apple dumpling at Gizditch Ranch, go do yourself a favor and make some pie crust, coat an apple in cinnamon sugar and butter, wrap that crust around your apple and bake that thing until flakey and possibly too delicious to really exist. Drizzle some caramel sauce over the top and the whole thing tastes illegal. Or just drive out to Watsonville and get one. I swear, you will not make it to the parking lot without devouring it.

Aside from my birthday and the approach of the school year, my trip to Gizditch Ranch is really what got me started on thinking about seasons. We showed up to the farm hoping to get some strawberries (you pull off to the side of a dusty road, grab a bucket, pick as many berries as you want, and then pay for your beautiful, fresh berries right there in the field after they’re weighed) but sadly, they were all picked out. The Come Back Next Season sign was a big, fat reminder of how I’m pretty much always late when it comes to berry season. Luckily, they sell frozen berries from their tiny store for the hopelessly forgetful among us, and those make just as good a pie as the fresh ones.

Anyway, the beautiful thing about missing strawberry season was actually the reminder that seasons do end; they turn, turn, turn—and the fact that they are finite makes the things worth savoring that much sweeter. I think back specifically to last summer when I worked on a dog ranch. My jobs ranged anywhere from refilling spray bottles with bleach, to cleaning mats of shedded hair from fences, to feeding puppies, to putting bark collars on some of the scariest boarding dogs, to the never-ending job of shoveling dog poop. It was undoubtedly the most challenging job I’ve had, both physically and mentally—but I look back and think of how I grew in that time, spending my long hours of cleaning and corralling dogs talking to God about how sweet the puppies were and asking for the grace when I felt mistreated by a coworker. I wasn’t allowed to have my phone on me, and workers weren’t supposed to socialize much. In the moment this solitude, mixed with eu de hot sun-on-retriever manure was torture. Now I genuinely miss that season for how much time I was able to spend in prayer.

I don’t always love the season I’m in, but it’s good to remember that there’s almost always something I can glean, or simply enjoy in it.

And now from my camera roll, some things I have been savoring this past month: