I went to school during the age of wall to wall chalkboards and hand size erasers that were slammed together repeatedly at the end of the day to pound out clouds of chalk dust. My younger children laugh at me when I bring this up. “Oh mom, you’re so old…. that’s so funny, no one has that anymore… what a mess that would make.”
Hmmm.
I suppose somewhere in the world, where technology hasn’t swallowed our memories, there still might be chalkboards and erasers, but not here. I think about them from time to time, especially in September, when the back to school smell of fresh crayons and excited children waiting in bus lines make me nostalgic for those by-gone days of my own childhood learning.
As I was out on my morning walk today, I found myself remembering those chalkboards and erasers.
Remember how at the end of a day the chalkboard would be filled with lines, marks, letters and numbers in almost every nook and cranny? As the day came to a close, someone would be assigned to clap the clouds of dust out of those big erasers, and someone else would clear that chalkboard of all of those marks, all of the words.
And all of the days mistakes.
We got a clean slate.
A do over.
A fresh start for the new day.
When we returned in the morning the chalkboard was bare, the erasers were fresh and ready to go, ready to forgive our new mistakes once again.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we treated our own lives, and our own selves, with the same grace and forgiveness as chalkboards and big erasers?
