My daughter once gave me the nickname of Patrice. She used it whenever I was particularly impatient. If I was grumpily badgering her and her brother to get going or sighing with exasperation at what was not happening fast enough, she’d say, “Alright, Patrice.” or “I hear you, Patrice.” And it nearly always did the trick. I laughed and snapped out of the have-to-right-now mindset and realized the silliness of my approach to the moment. Be lighter, my daughter was telling me.

Along the way, stories surfaced. Memories of those who have passed that we hadn’t had a chance to speak aloud in ages. Someone started us in song and we all joined in, while sipping sweet sweet chai. Which is the point of communal gatherings focused on grief — there is bitterness and sweetness all mixed in.

We tell ourselves we don’t know how, we don’t have time, it won’t be/look/work quite right, and hence we need a new one, or - perhaps we try to bargain with the climate gods - a newish one. So many ways in which we dupe ourselves and keep pulling the sheets over the final blooms, trying trying trying to ignore what we know is true. Florida is sinking. The patient is dying. Change is inevitable.

The damp stench of late summer, composting into itself, is gone. In their place, the cooler air carries the handiwork of cutting boards and stoves, sautéing and roasting, vegetable matter pulled from the earth and tossed in a pan. Just weeks ago, it was all about cold noodles and salads, watermelon eaten over the sink, a chunk of tomato sprinkled with salt. But there was a frost warning the other night and people have been drawn inside to stand in front of an open flame, stirring the alchemy of a new season.

I mainly know that I need to be more awake, more naked. Keep stripping the layers away in order to be more me is what I’m after, and a job is often layers of protective coating, of blinders and safety that permit us from evolving. Any big life event — leaving a job, having children, divorce, losing a loved one, moving — necessarily throws us into the threshold space, that place of discomfort where you’re neither here nor there. It’s a place where, try as you might, you cannot force yourself out of, you simply have to be in it.

What if instead of taking cues from the world of business with its ‘innovation hubs ‘and ‘corporate campuses,’ schools looked to the arts for inspiration?

We think we want this, but we are so conditioned toward the end goal — even if it’s vague as hell — that we can’t get over ourselves. A friend who started a private elementary school that is focused on whole-child learning, nature, process over product, no standard testing, place-based curriculum (ETC!) said that parents love the idea of it but they still want to be sure their kid can get into Harvard.