Here’s wishing everyone in the DCD Community a wonderful Thanksgiving. In the spirit of gratitude, I’m sharing this poem about noticing each of our days. I am thankful each day for the privilege of leading our wonderful school, and for my partnerships with DCD’s kind, skilled, and thoughtful adults and children. We are a hard-working community, and I hope you all enjoy a well-deserved break in the days ahead – and some days filled with “just the right amounts of sunlight and shade.” I’ll look forward to seeing all of you when we return.
The Life of a Day, Tom Hennen
Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has
its own personality quirks which can easily be seen
if you look closely. But there are so few days as
compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it
would be surprising if a day were not a hundred
times more interesting than most people. But
usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless
they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red
maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly
awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost
traveler and bunches of cattle. For some reason
we like to see days pass, even though most of us
claim we don’t want to reach our last one for a
long time. We examine each day before us with
barely a glance and say, no, this isn’t one I’ve been
looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for
the next, when, we are convinced, our lives will
start for real. Meanwhile, this day is going by per-
fectly well-adjusted, as some days are, with the
right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light
breeze scented with a perfume made from the
mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak
leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meander-
ing skunk.