Why don’t clementines come in crates anymore?

Thats what I thought as I looked at an old clementine crate, labeled in my ex-husband’s handwriting: “Finn Training.”

It’s morning, and even though I’ve been up mostly since 3:00 in the morning, I’m somehow running later than I want to.
The dog poop bags need refilling, which is what took me to the laundry room, where the clementine crate is trying to organize pet chaos.

Later, I’ll google it and it will seem like somewhere somehow some people are still getting their clementines in cute crates. But, my stores only have them in those orange mesh bags. I get it. I do. The orange of the bags make the clementines look orangier, enticing.

In between my clementine wonderings, I have what we in the teaching business call “a day.”

My name is said so many times, I wish I had worn my little clicker so I could know the exact number. My coffee is spilled when someone shoves a game to make themselves some room at my table. The game knocks my coffee to the floor, spilling in that drippy spread out way coffee spills.

I use it as an opportunity to model deep breathing. I literally say out loud, “I am going to take a deep breath.”

I do, we do, you do.

Kids bicker all day, about regular things like places in line and who should put a supply back. But also about so many things that you can’t imagine…things like sidewalk sections and tree bark. As math is starting, I have to separate two friends. As in step in between them with my hands stretched in stop signals.

All day I give directions and am I saying real words? It would seem I am not. II know how Charlie Brown’s teacher feels.

When I get home from school my brain goes back to that clementine crate.

I keep searching for a metaphor but I’m not sure which direction to search. Am I looking for how things used to be? The cute wooden crate of a long ago school day? Am I trying to find an orange mesh bag to put over the last weeks of school? Perhaps I’m just noticing that I hardly registered my ex-husband’s handwriting on the crate. It’s there, in the background, a blemish on the past.

But, there’s only one thing I’m regretting about my past right now. I really should have kept more of those super cute and useful clementine crates.