Sweet Secrets

Note: this post was written 4/22/16, but I could not post it until today when the public announcement of my new position as an upper school academic dean was made.

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I was grateful for stop lights on that chilly November morning. In the slanting rays of early sun, I could gently tap the underside of my new ring against the top of the steering wheel, turning it first one way and then the other to see how it caught the light, watching sparkly shapes bounce off the interior of the car's hood. Since Jeff put it on my hand the previous evening, I hadn't moved it from its new home. Though it had yet to settle on the ring finger of my left hand--yet to make the well-worn indentation that speaks to years of a partnership--I couldn't imagine taking it off. For now, just for that morning, the secret remained mine; I even intentionally wore a sweater with long sleeves that I could stretch over my hand, pushing my thumb through a small hole. Though I daydreamed of the revelatory day ahead as I revealed the surprise to colleagues and students, for just that moment, in the quiet hum of my car as I waited at the red light just off the Garden State Parkway, the news was mine and mine alone.

*   *   *

Despite the chaos of the day, my phone was wedged tightly in my pocket everywhere I went. There was hardly a moment to breathe between one end-of-year event and the next; at each, my absence might be conspicuously noticed. Never trusting myself to feel the vibration of the call, I anxiously checked the blank screen every few moments, willing it to light up with the only number I cared to see. When it finally did, I skirted around students to find a quiet nook in the performing arts building, a place where no wayward teacher or well-intentioned administrator might find me. I cautiously raised my phone to my ear, then awaited the words. When the numbers reported were far higher than even I could have hoped, I sank to the ground, hand pressed against my stomach, reassuring myself that little Lily was really tucked safely in there. A senior glanced down the hallway, making her way to the auditorium where graduation traditions were about to begin but pausing long enough to lift an eyebrow and tilt her chin up. The smile that spread across my face told her that all was just fine--even though the secret was not yet ready to be spilled. Or perhaps because the secret was not yet ready to be spilled--because Lily and I got to keep it safely and sweetly stowed between ourselves for a few more weeks.

*   *   *

I stopped outside the door, pausing on the steps that would lead me down to the road and across the sidewalk that passed between two wide expanses of green. When I'd walked across forty minutes before, I hadn't realized it was chilly--the anxious buzzing in my stomach and warm dampness of my palms had pushed all other physical sensations away. But now--now that a wide smile was beginning to spread across my face and my fingers were itching to place calls and send texts--I was suddenly aware of each detail of my surroundings. It was no matter that the clouds obscured the sun or that only a handful of students sat in the barren quad--this newfound secret, this thing that I now knew--drifted a sweet haze across the campus. It seemed impossible that no one else knew, that no one else wanted to shout it from the trees or whisper it in someone else's ear. But then--as I stretched out my legs to hasten my return to my classroom--a shiver of delight danced over me as I remembered that sweet secrets last only temporarily--that they will soon enough be known and then spread wide. 

*   *   *

These moments--the ones no one else knows about it, the ones that are held tightly, securely in our own minds and bodies--these are the ones that are fleeting. Who knows how many more await me? 

I shall enjoy this one.