Friday, December 23, 2011

Love in My Pocket

Christmas is here. And that is a definite. It starts too early these days, if you ask me: tinsel and chubby Santas pushing out skeletons and witches in late October. My favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, no longer even exists in the world of marketing. Maybe that is why I find myself so grateful that Christmas is finally here. The excitement is too much for these kids. They are literally spinning in circles in the middle of the kitchen, painting ornaments and walls and each other, cutting out ninja-bread men cookies, decking the halls both inside and out.

Yesterday I found the baby Jesus in my coat pocket. We have a lot of manger scenes, and you never know where these characters will show up. I won’t mention where I found the Wise Man!

Their spirit is infectious. Both the children AND the manger scene characters. Can’t beat the love and the laughter in this house and the blatant, bald excitement. And I like the idea of Jesus in my pocket. He probably doesn’t appreciate the receipts and lint and random change, but when I reach in, it reminds me of my own re-birth.

I was always confused about Christmas when I was younger. I just couldn’t get a handle on Jesus being re-born and re-born year after year. (Now that I have given birth to three children, I realize that one birth is quite enough!) But recently I think I am beginning to understand. I think of this world, the dear friends who have lost jobs this year, the sad stories of friends losing loved ones. I think of the births of babies in our school family, of new relationships I have formed. I wonder what the baby in the manger long ago would think. He gets it already. It is all about the love.

I have had so much trouble missing my dad this season. I get in the car with the Christmas songs and the lights and the tears start to pour. What I wouldn’t give for him to be here sitting in his corner chair in the dark, with only the tree and his cigarette butt lighting the room. I cried at Maura’s Christmas concert the other night. Something about the innocence and the harmonies made me miss him even more. I cry in the cheese aisle at the grocery while staring at the roka blue. My eleventh Christmas without him. But somehow he is here.

I feel him in my own excitement over shopping for the kids. He always did Christmas BIG. Legend has it that he wrestled some hapless woman years ago for the perfect Cabbage Patch doll. As a mom now, I know how he felt. Always wanted the best for us, to see the magic in our eyes on Christmas. It is a great feeling to give.

I feel him in my own re-birth. He was at the first one too, a snowy night that is getting farther and farther away, and still here now as I change my life. I am building my resume as a fledgling essay writer, and pounding the pavement preparing for a marathon. He would be amazed at these developments. I know his love and pride in the twinkling lights and Christmas songs he loved so well.

I always tell my students to participate in their own lives. There is no time to stagnate, no reason to simply let things happen around you without jumping in. And this is what I mean. Look for wisdom. Feel grateful. Follow your star. Love with abandon. Grow and change and love some more. Make miracles happen. Count your blessings. Count them again. And keep the baby Jesus in your pocket.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Hitting Return

“The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.”
-John Bingham

Just one second was all it took to hit return. And that was all it took to change my life. I feel it already and I don’t kid myself. This is big. I have been running now for almost 18 months exactly. Still a newbie. But in that time I have run a handful of 5 Ks, a fantastic 10 K fall run, a freeze-my-butt off 5 mile run–uphill, a 4 mile run for a girl with cancer, and TWO half-marathons.

And now I am headed to the big show. It might seem a little early, but I HAD to sign up today; the coupon expired! And now the date is emblazoned in my brain: May 20, 2012 is the day I will run my first marathon. I couldn’t be more nervous. And I couldn’t be more proud.

The miracle IS that I had the courage to start.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

This is Just to Say

Here is what happens when you are the very sensitive child of two English teachers and you are very tired and a little bit smarmy and you move your very pink towel aside to use your Dad's towel that is hanging on the rack and your Dad has a few words to say about it and then you call upon the power of your pen. Here is the note Maura wrote and propped up on the toilet. All words have been copied as is.

Dear Dad,

Sorry about last night. I couldnen't help using it because it was so warm and comfey. Well, I can't worry about that now. Theres a big busy day ahead. Have a nice day at work!! Sorry I didn't wright this in cursive, that would have been better, I was in a hurry for bed. byby! ps. I'm talking about the towel in case you forgot it didn't make your day easier did it?

Burger (Maura's very private nickname from her Dad)

Thursday, December 1, 2011

I Get To Do This

I love how the world works, how chance encounters and quick decisions that don’t even seem like decisions at the moment can shape your entire life and vision. Through a series of seemingly random events that began with a part-time writing gig last year, I have met and corresponded recently with some very strong women athletes. Not seeing myself in this category, I nevertheless have taken a mantra from their ranks. (These are women who can complete an Ironman—certainly not in my league, but wasn’t it Browning that said your reach much exceed your grasp? I don’t mind the stretch!)

And it is just one simple sentence from one busy woman in Wisconsin that has really changed my tune. “I get to do this.” Five words that can change the way I see the everyday, the miraculous, and the difficult. A little known cousin of “I HAVE to do this”, my new mantra opens doors and colors the way I look at everything. Really.

I get to do this. I scrub the dishes and greasy pans from dinner. And it makes me thankful for the food on my table and my healthy children who can eat it without fear of allergies or disease.

I get to do this. I wash load after load of clothes and I am grateful for the water piped into my house and the fact that I don’t have to haul everything to the Laundromat. Or the river.

I get to do this. I rake the leaves (and rake and rake and rake) and realize how much I love the change of seasons and the 19 solid trees in my yard that bring me shade and animals and a whole pile of fun in the fall for my kids.

I get to do this. I teach with passion and make some tough calls with adolescents on a daily basis. But I am so thankful to have a job to help my family and a job that makes a difference. Even on the days it feels like talking to cement block.

I get to do this. I wake before 5 to make it to the gym and run fast on the treadmill. This never fails to amaze me as I make my legs and lungs do things I never thought they could. And I offer up the pain for people like my paralyzed friend Scott who would give anything to be running in my place.

The list goes on and on. When I change my mindset from “I HAVE to do this” to “I GET to do this”, everything seems a blessing rather than a drudgery. I have always been an optimist, but somehow this simple mantra makes it all more clear. I am a very lucky woman and I am thankful for all I get to do!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Shaken, But Not Stirred

Friday was one of those days that shakes you to your core, makes you question your career choice and the society in which you live, and teaches you (via sledgehammer) that words do indeed have power. And even if you don’t feel superstitious, you realize that full moons DO affect the behavior of adolescents. And their parents.

I will spare my sensitive readers the ugly details, but there was some misbehavior, some consequences, and some very angry parents slinging some really powerful and highly derogatory words around. I wasn’t even in the middle of it but that kind of name-calling really takes a toll.

Here I am in a roomful of teen-agers trying to fight the good fight and teach manners, writing, love for neighbor, grammar, life skills, resiliency, etc., (not necessarily in that order) and it feels like the whole world is spinning off its rocker. Have you ever been in a room full of thirty 14 year olds? Now THAT is a job. Trust me. I love this job quite often and the moments of discovery and humor and growth. But think of all the hormones and the growing pains and the personalities spreading their fledgling selves!! It is a lot.

My colleague took the brunt of it this time, but I have been there too. It was his name at the heart of the matter and he had the most to lose. As a teacher you take a moment to discipline and model and try to teach the life lesson, and it all blows up in your face.

We couldn’t even talk yesterday, just shook our heads and looked at the floor as we tried to figure out how people could behave that way. It was very much a funeral; we were mourning so many things like common decency and respect and etiquette.

At a loss for words, I realized my dad said it best. (I don’t know why it surprises me that even after ten and a half years it is my father’s voice I hear in my head and pull out to comfort my friend.) My dad was a tough man; a stint in the army, his job in the steel mill blast furnace, and his career as a repo man made sure of that. His well-worn line: “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

There’s the rub. I am always tripping on my superhero cape in my struggles to bring peace and justice to the land. Trapped between going whole hog to fight the good fight, or choosing a more prudent, turn-the-other-cheek Gospel approach. Sometimes the line is spiderweb thin. And sometimes I am a little too feisty to decide (prudently) what approach to take. Living the Gospel and praying for those who persecute me (and my friends) seems like kow-towing and letting the bad guys win. But then again, I need a job and a paycheck to support my family and I really do enjoy teaching the future.

I always say this is a job of moments. The giggle of the new girl warms my heart when she finally loosens up in a room full of strangers, a young man turns himself around and starts doing his work consistently, a student creates a metaphor I can remember by rote years later. But there are hard moments too: when the truth gets lost and the players get nasty. It is junior high after all, (with all that entails) and I know that parents love their children (and don’t always believe what they are capable of.) But I don’t know why they won’t believe that I love them too.

Things are a little better today. The moon has waned. Time has started to heal. The deep breathing is helping. And I have chosen to do what I am called to do. (It IS good to re-evaluate choices and methods and heart, after all.) I will not forget that words have power; I choose them carefully. In my head is the whisper of my father and my hope for the future: “The good guys in the white hats always win.”

Monday, November 7, 2011

Loud and Desperate

”Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” ― Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau says that most men live lives of quiet desperation. At this point in the fall, my desperation is anything but quiet. The animals feel it too. We are racing the winter. The chipmunks are speeding around my patio chattering. The squirrels are running and grabbing and digging. And I am whirling and screaming and fretting.

I feel this desperate animal kind of clawing from the inside out. This clutching at time. The race to the winter. Or is it something more?!

Whole piles of laundry lie unwashed so that I can hit the trail and run through the woods. I go for three miles, and stay for five. The light is so different in the fall, and sends a halo of sorts over the already golden trees.

I breathe in the crispness of autumn, and the chill on my fingers subsides as I tick off the miles. I can see my breath. I run faster, racing the winter: one more corner to round, one more sunny day to inhale, one more colored leaf to follow as it flits to the earth.

The other day the leaves fell like rain. I grew giddy, running and playing the game my daughter plays with the neighbor girl, trying to catch the leaves before they fell. I didn’t manage to snag one, but it seemed as though the air buoyed ME as I ran, crunching the brown and gold at my feet.

I know well the things of winter: the early dark and frozen toes and silent earth. And the fall is a good time to struggle with dreams and intentions and songs before all are buried beneath the blanket of snow or tucked away under the comforter I use to keep warm when the dark comes too early.

And so I wrestle. I run. I jump in and pull back like my son in the pile of leaves on the curb. We both make a mess of things and grab the rake to start again. We laugh at squirrels who search for nuts and scamper up trees and bury treasures they will never find again. And we giggle and frolic and make treasures of our own before the winter buries us all.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

(Not Quite) Silver Spoons

The new in-sink-erator really works. Found out the hard way tonight when my grandmother’s metal measuring spoons took a few turns in the jaws of death and ended as a mangled mess. Kind of how my day went as a whole: a jumbled twist of metal. Just another thing to add to the garbage pile, I thought, as I saw the dents where the ONE TABLESPOON used to be.

I always thought of her when I used those spoons, measuring out salad dressing or vanilla for cookie dough or liquid ibuprofen when the pharmacy spoon went missing. And in my kitchen I drifted back to my days as a girl (funny that a cheap set of spoons could spawn a time machine.) But with the magic spoons I remembered the tapioca pudding and homemade soups and the way she ate peanut butter straight from the jar.

They were plenty older than I, and tonight was just their time I suppose. They were a connection, however tenuous, to a woman I loved so much and who has been gone way too long. She died when I was in eighth grade, twenty-five years ago. This year marks the silver anniversary of her leaving.

I’m not sure how she packed so much love and so many lessons into such a short amount of time with me, (although maybe I teach eighth grade in some vain attempt to re-create the life I knew when she last walked this earth.) And I am sometimes amazed that she has stayed so vividly in my head all these years.

But those brief moments with her measuring spoons kept her alive somehow (yes I know that Prufrock would rather they be coffee spoons that were measuring a LIFE, but a little baking powder in a warm cookie counts pretty well too.)

And it will take more than the death of the spoons to kill the lessons inside me. She taught me to love books, to read voraciously, to hunger for mysteries. I’ve already passed on THAT lesson to my own daughter, the kind of girl who falls asleep with the book on her head or hides under the covers to finish a chapter.

She taught me kindness, to accept people and see the best in them, no matter what their lot in life. She loved them equally: the young man who cut her grass, the neighbor lady across the fence, and even those who did her wrong. She had her moments of fire, but mostly she shared her faith and friendship under the pear tree at the end of her lane.

My grandma instilled in me a sense of duty, demanded that we work first and play second. We woke up at the crack of dawn, drank coffee (mostly warm milk for me), cleaned the house, set the stew on for dinner, and then changed back into our pajamas around three in the afternoon for reading and eating and Wheel of Fortune. We each had our own couch. That is my kind of living.

And the lessons have stayed. Just today in class I was recounting her words when my students were whining about taking notes: Work first, and play later. And yesterday I was admonishing my son to be nice, (yes even to the girls.) The lessons in reading and writing come easily. I pass them without thinking. And I just this minute remembered she did a stint as a reporter before her familial roles began. I can channel her muse as I begin the school newspaper this year.

The measuring spoons are toast, no trade in value for that kind of metal. But my grandma and I are going for another twenty-five years. We’ll ditch the spoons and measure the smiles, the hugs, the good reads, and the good friends. Even if we have to do it in a strange past and future realm.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

A Million Ways to Die

It could be dramatic. And traumatic. You could be a twenty-five year old doctor’s son, out for an end-of-summer fling, and be bludgeoned to death in someone else’s fit of rage. Or you could be a sweet six-year old child on your way home from fireworks, killed by a teen in a pick-up truck going one hundred miles an hour. You could be a fun-loving adventurer who has traveled the world, and die on a dock after diving into a Michigan lake. But then again, you might be resuscitated and live to tell the tale after all.

It could be quiet. And gentle. (Though Dylan Thomas would beg to differ.) You might slip away during Jeopardy one evening after five years of pain. Or fall sleep on your tummy in the crib with your lovey and never wake up.

You could drink yourself dead or walk in front of a train. You could fight heroically and rage against the disease, only to wither eventually. You could clutch your chest at the end of 26.2 and hit the ground before you ever receive your medal. You could go to work one day and get hit by a plane at your desk. Or free fall with a crumbling building and America’s innocence.

Yep, there are a million ways to die.

But me? I am more concerned with finding a million ways to live. Henry David said it best: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Discovering life instead of killing time? Sounds like a plan. Time will kill ME eventually. So heading to the woods and sucking the marrow out of life as Thoreau advocates sounds like the way I’d like to live. There are worse things than physical death. So many people have given up already, just going through the motions without a spark or a dream or a thrill.

It reminds me of The Princess Bride and Miracle Max who resuscitates Westley when he is only “mostly dead.” I don’t want to live my life mostly dead, just waiting for the Grim Reaper to take shape and shuffle me out stage left.

Breathing deeply, chasing my dreams, running through the woods, sucking marrow, teaching, writing, mothering, laughing: these are for me. I want to live, and not, when my number is called, find out that I had been mostly dead all along.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Of Helicopters and Leeches

In fifteen plus years of teaching, I thought I had seen it all. I’ve watched a young man screaming at his dad in front of me at conferences. I have withstood the onslaught of a lawyerly mother trying to win a few more points for her daughter. I’ve had a student stand up in the middle of class to swear at me and ensure at highest decibel that everybody in the room hated me. I’ve thrown a few erasers, received a few crank calls, and have managed to sneak in a little Thoreau and sentence structure amid the cacophony of teen noise in front of me each day.

For the past handful of years I have been teaching junior high students, a strange world in which the players are facing major life issues like peer pressure, drugs, and identity, but who also vie for smelly stickers on their spelling tests. (A dichotomy I have yet to understand.) They still have trouble tying their shoes and bringing a pencil to class, but they are faced with decisions with social media or with controlled and uncontrolled substances that could literally ruin their lives. Or worse.

Despite my colorful past in the classroom, I have just recently begun to think that the world has gone mad: specifically the world of parents. I see it in my classroom and in my school and the schools of my friends. This world is changing fast and I don’t know how to hold on. Yes, I do believe that the majority of parents are sane, loving and appropriate, but I fear the pendulum is currently swinging slightly toward the crazy.

The term helicopter parent has been bandied around for the last several years and I do think it is an appropriate concept for the parents I see habitually running lunch up to kids that have forgotten them or hand-picking sports teams and friends. (There is a fine line between lovingly helping a kid out once in a true emergency and becoming an enabler.)

But it’s getting worse. I’d like to coin a new phrase: Leech Parent. More and more, I am seeing students who are having the life sucked out of them by parents who make every decision at every moment. Yes, there was a time for that, and I believe it ended when the kid’s diaper-wearing days ended.

Parents are doing homework for kids, picking out kid’s clothes, making the lunches and choosing the activities. And worse, they are calling the other moms to solve playground problems and calling teachers to defend the little ones from responsibility. Whether they are trying to live vicariously through their children or think they are “helping” by dictating every move, the Leech Parent causes some problems.

I give an open assignment and a student can write or speak about anything in the universe, and I get a blank stare because her parent has always made every choice and she has no idea what she feels passionately about. Or a student gets in a prickly situation and can’t handle himself because his parents always bailed him out. (Of course with the advent of cell phones, said parents can be there in a jiffy to continue the bailing).

I just worry about a society where the young are not taught to think and reason, where there are no consequences to actions, where kids are not allowed to feel uncomfortable or disciplined. Yes I want my children to enjoy life, but some of the best lessons come from mistakes made and consequences rendered. How will children learn this if never forced to choose, or lose?!

I know that I am a little more on the free-range side of parenting. My first and third graders make their own lunches (and my FOUR year old makes my husband’s so he doesn’t feel left out.) I let my kids ride their bikes down the street unaccompanied and expect them to remember their own backpacks and clean their own rooms and choose their own friends. I stay out of the way, not because I don’t love them immensely, but because I do.

As a mother, I feel I should be the soft place to land, the one at home with the band-aids and the hugs after a hard day. Unfortunately, some families don’t even NEED band-aids anymore because the children are never allowed the slightest bump in the road. (And the irony: the parents don't realize that the wounds from the leech marks will need far more than band-aids.)

And for my classroom and our future in this country, this makes me very nervous.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

It's a Polka Party and I'll Cry if I Want To

“I think his name was Paul,” she said, with all the innocence of her eight years and those pursed lips and wide eyes she uses to shyly say she is proud of herself.

She had wanted to polka. With a vengeance. The invitation had come several weeks before for the annual party held by her Nana’s twin brother. And she had talked of nothing else for days. I knew she was excited for the pierogies and the dessert table, but it was really the dancing that had her mesmerized.

But when we arrived at the party, she realized that there was no one to dance with. Nana was busy telling stories, her parents had no rhythm, and her brothers could not be cajoled away from the marshmallow peanut butter brownies. Uncle Nick did his best and tried his hand, but it was all too soon before a kinder older gentleman stepped in. We think his name was Paul.

Let me digress to say that my children and I were the only people there under the age of fifty, by a long shot. And most of the guests were quite older than that. But her youth was not the only thing that made Maura stand out. She is earnest, in all tasks, but especially things like this. She doesn't quite stick her tongue out while trying to figure out the polka, like her little brother does when he is busy concentrating, but her face says it all. Quiet strength.

She has this shy demeanor, especially in public, and never moreso than at a gig like the Honky Express bash, median age 63. (It would also be a good time to point out that the police were called, albeit at 4:30 p.m., because the music was too much for the neighbors. I hope they didn't see the geriatrics double-fisting Crown Royal in the corner. There HAS to be a law against that!) So amidst all the chaos, of course Maura turned bright red when her uncle twirled her into Paul’s waiting arms, and then again when Paul continued to polka her feet around the dance floor.

And it was somewhere there between the Honky Express saxophone belting in the summer afternoon, and the gray-haired man twirling my girl around the floor, and the sweetest smile of pleasure and delight plastered to her face, that I lost it a bit. The elders were too intoxicated to see the tear roll down my cheek. But I had to bite my lip to keep from losing them all.

It’s so unfair, these moments remind me, what she has lost. Although in fairness I suppose she cannot miss what she did not have. But my heart is heavy for her grandpa she never knew (and who would most likely never have polkaed with her had she did.)

But what she WOULD have had?!? Oh, what she would have had.

The way she looked up at Paul on the dance floor with the sun kissing her tanned skin, and all the joy and trust in the world wrapped in the face of an angel, well that scene made her mother wish for many things that might have been.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Tell Me About Your Child

I was just fine until I got to the Tell Me About Your Child form. The first day of school is always busy, a whirling of early waking and getting there and getting through. And we did it. We had a heck of a day. I liked my students, my kids liked their teachers and everybody liked the spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.

And now they are all in bed. (Take THAT late summer nights!) And the lunches are made and the uniforms laid out and I have settled in with my ballpoint and pile of forms: the usual permissions and doctors’ phone numbers and handbook agreements and then this.

For the first grader, tucked at the back of the pile, a questionnaire. Oh, the things I could tell you about my child. There is suddenly a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye and I don’t understand how a school form just stops me dead in my tracks.

And I am not sure how to condense his whole self into six questions on a form.
Oh, to put all the dreams on this paper. My goals for my son? His special qualities include? How does he approach learning?

Does she really want to know?

He approaches learning, that’s for sure!! I’m not sure she can handle the truth: the animal habitats that he makes in the yard (and the dead frog attempted-resuscitation on the air hockey table), the cardboard collection that clogs the basement stairs and collects in his closet, the Lego world that tumbles through my dining room.

She’ll learn soon enough that he is everybody’s friend. Trust me, it won’t take long to see him hug his buddies and check on someone who falls on the playground or demand that someone give him a piggy back at recess. And they always do. He is pretty magical.

He won’t finish anything. (Well maybe now that he is at the ripe old age of seven, but I think he had a pretty solid non-finishing policy last year.) Oh, he’ll start with gusto and a passion I’ve rarely seen, but it takes a pretty amazing Lego set to keep him going to the finish. He lives in the moment, and he lives with fire. The heat may surprise her and it will certainly keep her on her toes.

How do I tell her all of this in a few lines on a form? That he is the one that will take care of me when I’m old. That with his twinkling eyes and crooked smile, he is starting to look a lot like my long-dead father. That he is a boy beyond my wildest dreams and I have no idea how his creativity was born. That he works hard and plays hard and dreams big and oh, if you REALLY want him to do something, you need to offer him cold hard cash.

Tell her about my child? It won’t take very long for her to figure him out herself. He wears his heart on his sleeve and a few tricks up it too. And I am hoping she can love him like I do.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Dear Parents:

Dear Parents,

Summer is drawing to a close. I am sure you have purchased a bunch of pens and white polos and two-pocket folders by now. But before you start the Halleluja Chorus and send the sweet little beasts back to me, let’s get a few things straight. I love your children. I said that out loud to you last night at Meet the Teacher, and you were probably wondering about me. I said other odd things too (and your children will report these continuing idiosyncracies throughout the year I’m sure); I like to shake it up a little, and the love comment probably had you furrowing a brow. But think about it: why ELSE would I hang out with thirty 14 year olds every day, masochism aside of course? And especially your kids? You know how they can be!!

I suppose even after 15 years of teaching I am still a Polly-Anna of sorts. I still think I can change the world with a bit of passion and a couple teaching strategies up my sleeve. I’ve honed my style for years and have a few letters after my name to prove I am highly educated in my field (MAT if you were wondering). Not quite a Master Jedi, but it will have to do! And I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I will teach your students how to write this year and communicate effectively in a variety of ways. And I have actually been paid to do this myself: to write, to edit, to publish. Just so you know. And although I am an old-fashioned kind of gal, I will do my fair share with the active board and ipads and grammar ninja interactives this year. I know all about Facebook and text messaging and all these new-fangled things so they can’t pull the wool over my eyes. Don’t you worry.

Because I love your children, there are a few things you need to know. With love comes responsibility: theirs and mine. First of all, I want what’s best for them, just like you. I want them to think creatively and critically and make new friends and enjoy their chocolate milk cartons at lunch and bring their homework to class. And I also want to challenge them to be BETTER than they think they can be…at thinking, at compassion, at writing, at living. Sometimes it is smooth sailing and we do our lessons and write our vocabulary sentences and eat our Smarties and everything is hunky-dory. But sometimes the little dears may require a little more TLC: Tough Love Camp. (Ask my own son why he is often sitting on the step in time out or losing out on the baseball cards he was trying to earn.) Discipline is the key to success in all aspects of life. And if your children need a little dose of discipline to get them on the right track, just know that they will get it. If we do the small things well, we can move to success in the big things.

Please know that I do not lie awake at night thinking of ways to torment your children. Believe me, I need my sleep and I am usually snoring before my head hits the pillow. This job is exhausting. Three hundred decisions a day. “Can I go to the bathroom?” “Is this the right answer?” “Where do I put this test?” (and I bite my tongue to resist the snarky answer since we have put EVERY test in the exact same spot and it is APRIL!) “Is it time for lunch?” “Can you talk to Johnny? He just punched me.” The all-day answering machine (me!!) gets pretty worn out. Not to mention the kids with the real problems like a father with cancer or a mother in another state. I used to haul dirt and rocks for a landscaper in the summer. I was MUCH LESS tired after ten hours of landscaping in the sun than from a day in the classroom. So no, I don’t have time for vendettas, or to pick on your individual children. I like them all equally!

Middle school is a difficult time; let’s make that clear at the beginning. It is my privilege to help your children navigate a world where they still appreciate smelly stickers on their spelling tests but they are starting to deal with puberty and drugs and friends that are enemies and bad influences that look pretty darn appealing. But I cannot coddle them. Growing up and breaking up are both hard to do. Life is not always fair and bad things DO happen to good people. I would be re-miss if I did not try to teach your children these truths. I will be gentle (mostly) but some of my best lessons from my own father who loved me dearly came at pretty ferocious speeds and very high decibels. I will do my best to teach your children well.

My hope for them this year is that they will become articulate, fun-loving, passionate, and hard-working. We will have our moments of disappointment and great joy this year, I am sure. (Everything is larger when seen through the lens of middle school angst.) And yes, I will love them. Love them with all my might as we navigate together this middle passage. I pray for calm waters and smooth sailing, a sturdy boat and a lot of hands on deck, and it should be a pretty great year!

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Things I Never Thought I Would Have to Do

1. Create a family rule that goes something like this: “No sitting on the couch without underwear.” This seems, at first glance, to be something the offspring might know intuitively, but in actuality it is an oft-quoted and difficult to enforce rule.


2. Pry a flattened, dead bird from inside my sobbing son’s makeshift banjo. (Think empty blackberry container covered in tin foil and strung with three or four rubber bands.) In a cemetery. And the crying was NOT because of his two dead grandpas buried in said cemetery, or even the fact that the poor bird was dead, but his giant hiccupping cries were because he wasn’t allowed to take the dead bird home!

3. Supply endless plates, sponges, pieces of foil et al. for the frog habitats being built in this yard. This place is just JUMPING with frogs. And little boys who want to build them homes, (whether the creatures want them or not.) And the little architects are pretty miserable that there is no netting or chicken wire available. Poor things.

4. Flush the toilet every single time I walk by the bathroom. This one is self- explanatory.

5. Dole out popsicles, fruit snacks, pretzel rods, snack crackers and juice boxes like some soup kitchen on steroids. Really, how could these waif-like kids eat this much?! And still maintain their skeletal figures?

6. Insist that the offspring change their clothes at least several times a week in the summer. (Sometimes they also take baths, although they maintain that the chlorine in the pool scours them just fine.) I probably could have saved a ton of money on the wardrobes. This does not include, of course, the costume pieces, which can never be too prolific. And summer apparently is the perfect time for tiger suits, dragons with head- pieces, and full body sharks.

7. Cower in fear when my son comes to hug me because I have been burned one too many times by the Fake-Hug-Drop-Worm-Down-Mom’s-Shirt move.

8. Catch my breath when the little guy rides his bike at breakneck speed down the sidewalk to cross a street or his brother front flips off the diving board. My heart is strong but these daredevils give these poor valves a work out, both in the intensity of my love for them and the heart-stopping rhythms with which these kids live their lives.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Ready to Roll

“Can we just have a little race, mom?” The kid is funny. First day on his new bike. He starts in costume, and soon realizes that the dinosaur tail and hood hinder mobility, not to mention it is over 80 degrees.

The costume gets flung aside quickly, and his grin widens as he realizes what this two-wheeler (four if you count the trainers) can do for his mobility.

And the race idea is funny. He doesn’t require another racer or a course or really much of anything for a “race”. All I need to do is say “Ready, set. Go” and he is off!

It’s a good metaphor as he grows and begins a new school year. My baby is four. He is entering pre-kindergarten this year (oh where do they get these monikers?) Apparently this just means extra time with crayons and letters and flinging pairs of socks at classmates in the large motor room (don’t ask).

He’s grown up a lot in the last few months. I see it in the way he talks to people, the aunts he knows so well and the kids he just meets at the playground. I marvel that he can fully dress himself (as long as we don’t mind if the cow shirt is backwards). And I get a little misty as I watch him ride his big boy bike all the way to the library. His churning legs keep up with the big kids and his face barely contains the giant grin and the pride in his eyes.

I hope he keeps this energy, this optimism, this flinging himself at life. The costumes will not last forever (well I guess you never know in this

family.) The bikes will be outgrown. The new markers and teachers and scissors will all dull with age, but I hope that this one thing will always remain. A precious boy with a zest for life and a desire to try new things. A boy who takes the job seriously when his mother says: “Ready, set, go” for whatever the future may bring.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Reflections

It occurs to me tonight, with the sun still bright on the water and the strong stench of fish in the air, that so many of my moments are nearly replications of the past. The break wall is hot under my legs as I stretch out to watch my kids play this evening, and I spy the fossil of a shell like I did as a young girl. There are buckets, shovels, the building of castles and the inevitable sand and water in the eyes.

Marty takes off down the beach, creating a carefully orchestrated bouquet of seagull feathers as he walks. He keeps right on walking. He hops on the slanted break wall, and I bite my tongue as I am about to yell at him to get down. Those were MY rules when I was a little girl, and I never thought to question them. But Marty helps me question everything. Why CAN’T he climb there? He is built like a monkey, and perfectly safe. I let him go. He wanders with head down, finding treasures. I turn to watch the other two build and splash and throw rocks in the water. They have not yet mastered the art of skipping them. When I look up, Marty is gone. My heart quickens for just a second, but I give him a few minutes to return on his own.

He saunters around the bend on his way back, sees me and runs over with an apology. (I am smart to dress him in yellow. He is easier to find.) But I am not even mad. I am learning so much about this boy, things I first learned from my father and the way he lived. But I was too tentative to live so astutely myself at such a young age as seven. Or nine. Or thirty. I was a rule follower, a nervous Nellie, a “good girl.” It has taken me nearly forty years to start questioning and walking on break walls and finding my voice.

I envy my son his freedoms and his ability to do this already. It strikes me tonight that they are much alike, my son and my father, though maybe it is just the presence of the lake that makes me think of my dad. But Marty understands somehow what his grandpa knew. Do what you want. Follow your heart. Test limits. Have fun. Question everything. Find your passion. Sing the song first and pay the piper when the music ends. Play first and worry later.

Maybe it’s like the baldness gene or a penchant for musicality, and full-throttle life, living without boundaries, has to skip a generation. Or maybe it is just easier to learn the lesson the second time around. No matter what, I am lucky to have such fine teachers, both my father who paved the way for me, and my son who reflects the lessons even as the slanting sun reflects upon the lake tonight.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Delicious Language

My children love to play with words. They come by it naturally, I suppose. Can’t fault children of two English teachers for knowing their way around the language. And these three are especially full of verbage, let me tell you! The oldest flaunts her adverbs as only she can, the middle guy spouts his philosophies and prose, but this little one: the things that come out of HIS mouth are as diverse as they are unique.

My favorite is the way he says thank you. I can’t remember when it started, but somewhere between the sweetness of age three and the professional two-ness of it all, he coined a phrase that has been inaugurated into the family lore. It was some mundane occasion, probably on a Tuesday, and I was most likely handing him his milk, or MOKE, as we say in our house. He looked at me, brown eyes bulging, two freckles along his upper lip, and with a smile pronounced “Why thank you, my grand gate!” It sounded so regal coming from his lips, and certainly beat the mumbled “humph” of his brother. And I have continued to receive such thanks for the last half of the year. It has also morphed into usage with requests such as “Can I have my yogurt, my grand gate?”

Now where did he get this vernacular? I’ve quizzed him countless times in the last few months, thinking it had come from a show or a book or a pre-school teacher, but he remains firm in his denials. It just arrived here, with his giggling lilt and sparkling looks. Out of the mouths of babes, I suppose.

He just uses the language to suit his needs. (Something his mother has often been accused of, if the truth were known.) And he somehow makes the world look rosier through his language, or at least knocks you off balance long enough to sneak in a slur. With age four has come a bit of obstinance, for instance, and anger when he doesn’t get his own way. And then he looks at me, face strong and fierce, and proclaims “You bad old stump.” Now, really, who says this? Who walks around calling people stumps?

This young charmer of mine, that’s who. I prefer the positive spin of course, and I am tickled pink when I hear his sweet little words when I tuck him into to bed and hand him his “vitamint” at the end of a long busy day: “Why thank you my grand gate.” And I know I am the only mommy in the world who ever hears those whispered words!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Portrait of the Artist as a (Very) Young Man

The boy is pure magic. He lives in a world where corn husks and sticks become characters and props for a production only he can understand. And the pipe cleaners. Oh, what this boy can do with pipe cleaners. He creates his wares and then lays them out carefully in a makeshift gallery on the front porch. Except for the ones he carries: homemade slingshot and bow and arrow tucked lovingly in the pocket of his navy cut-off shorts, ready for any mischief or battles he may find in the yard.

He sees what others cannot see. I don’t know how he does it. But he fills his notebooks with page after page of sketches and whimsy and creatures. He talks me through them, toothless grin and wild voice and energy selling his soul. I am a willing customer. Drawing was never my thing, and I marvel unceasingly at the way his hand creates upon the page.

His art is larger than life, and not held back by realism or truth. He knows just enough to be dangerous and doesn’t let historical fact get in the way of his creations. His battle droids take on Civil War soldiers, from Great Britain. And the Irish flag is hoisted with the victory. Unfettered by data, this charmer with a Sharpie paints the world with a vision all his own. He will draw on anything: a rock from Achill, some Presque Isle driftwood, and his brother’s stomach if I ever have the audacity to shower.

The entire house is his studio, and I am forever tripping over his ever-growing supply of materials: string, electrical tape, rocks, legos, bits of ribbon and bird feathers and a giant cardboard collection. Did I mention the shoe boxes?! The artist is on duty at all times, grabbing for the empty margarine tub I am trying to recycle or doodling on the day’s newspaper.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I can’t wait to see where his love of the Indian headdress will take him, or his penchant for drawing and creating. Or hat-wearing. He has yet to outgrow his love of costumes, of glue and tape and string and markers, or his desire to be constantly creating. And the gleam in his eye when he picks up his notebook or rescues the perfect material from the recycling bag tells me that he never will.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Dear to Me

The deer have been here all day. It’s still a shock to my system to look out the window as I wash the dishes or walk by the patio door and see them there. The woods behind our house and empty field are the perfect home. Today there were three that lay all afternoon in the chilly sun.

But tonight, they came a little closer. I glanced outside during bath time and there were four deer munching in my garden. I know there will come a time when this will aggravate me, that deer are eating my carefully tended plants, but tonight this is amazing. The kids rush to the window and Seany is squealing so loudly that the deer glance up at us. My sweet daughter’s eyes are as wide as the field behind our house and we all spend a good five minutes with the beauty of nature.

My friend doesn’t understand my infatuation. He says deer are just the suburb’s version of pigeons, but I wildly disagree. And it is not just because I am sometimes convinced that the spirit of my father looks out through those still brown eyes in deer. There is just something about deer that quiets me, makes me reach to my inner calm, and makes me appreciate nature.

The spirits come to me in the early morning too. Yesterday was a dark and windy morning and I was running down the street. The spring warm had come for a brief moment and I was enjoying my morning run. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the first statuesque beauty. There were five altogether and I held my breath as they ran across the street in front of me, so graceful and smooth. I was certainly jealous of their abilities, but laughing to myself as well.

No pigeons to me. I will always be amazed. My breath will always catch, and I will always appreciate the quiet intensity of these beautiful creatures.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

It Only Hurts.....

It only hurts when I touch it. I come back again and again to this place. This pain. This line. It comes from nowhere. And everywhere. The giant whoosh of frigid wind off the lake as a door is opened. The searing pain from blinding light plus pounding head. The wrenching sobs of grief without containment.

So here we are again. White pall. Same priest. Same organist. Similar casket and mourners at attention. This time for a beloved teacher, the grandmother of one of my kids. But the grief does not just settle here for her.

The casket rolls into the back of the church, as close to the baptismal font as it will go. And time bends and the tears fog my eyes because now it is his casket I see. And it is I who am unfurling the white pall to cover it. And it is my friends looking on at the back of the church and me the one at the front of the gloomy parade.

The grief is raw and I can never understand how it swoops so quickly, like a hawk to a carcass, and carries me away.

Ten years, almost, since my father’s death. So many, many nights and mornings that he’s missed. And granddaughter kisses and light saber fights with the boys. It hurts too much to bear at times. And so this grief I tuck away. It’s like a dusty package in the corner of my room. I think I remember what is inside, but when I open it I am surprised beyond my dreams. Like shrapnel come the memories and the tears. And I struggle to put them back to bed.

Then a morning like this, I come to grieve for someone I have loved, who set a strong example of teaching for this path I’ve chosen. And I pack the Kleenex that I think are for her, and I show up at the appointed time.

But as the service begins, the grief takes flight and comes for me. The dark wrath rips me to shreds. The wounds are deep this time. Oh, how I want him back with me.

It takes a while to bandage, these holes in my heart. And the freshness of the wound continues to sting. But I dry my eyes and carry on, because it only hurts when I touch it.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Showing Up

Something new at age 39: a workout buddy. Reminds me of grade school field trips when I had to walk hand-in-hand with someone so as not to get lost. I guess it’s a lot like that actually. Our world is so busy, and it is really easy to get lost in the everyday, to go through the motions of living and get the laundry done and the dinner cooked and the kids bathed and the homework done and then collapse in a heap at the end of it all.

Exercise helps me to live with intention, and I like the idea of a workout pal to keep me on track and to keep me honest. This particular one is pretty relentless. Since we started this journey about ten months ago, Pat has texted me pretty much daily to report his workouts. This guy is faithful, and there are days that I growl as I hear the texting tone on my cell phone. He has shamed me into squeezing in a quick workout or taking a late night run because he is on track.

And that is good.

Lately we have been talking a lot about “showing up.” As our program has outlasted the honeymoon stage and we are now in the nitty-gritty of daily life with exercise, there are some days that the magic is just not there. But that is okay. Showing up is its own victory. Not every workout is Olympic caliber, nor should it be. This is a marathon, not a sprint. There will certainly be bad days and bad moments. But showing up and putting in the time are so important. To both of us.

I like that I am not the only one who will be disappointed if I do not make the effort. Pat keeps me moving and keeps my eyes on the prize. And I admit, there is something really wonderful about bragging to him about the big runs or achieving some goal that seemed impossible.

And the pride works both ways. I am amazed at his half-mile swims and long runs and the way he is pushing himself for a tri-athalon this summer.

It is fun to see that what we thought was only for “other, fit people” is now within OUR grasp. I was there for his first race, two crisp (mostly) uphill miles. And I will be there for his second race in a few weeks too. Double or nothing as we race four miles around a very flat course. These big moments are nice to share.

But mostly, I just appreciate the ding of the cell phone each day, the call to attention, the reminder to get up and move and make myself the woman I am meant to be. Like those field trip buddies from long ago, he keeps me from getting lost. And, most importantly, he keeps me showing up.

Monday, March 21, 2011

-in just spring

I love the spring. The students think I’m nuts. (Well they have more than their fair share of reasons, but my love of spring is probably at the top!) I am always spouting about buds popping and nature’s first green and getting outside for the sun and the Vitamin D and the crisp air.

And here it is. And it is nearly eight o’clock at night and I can hear the birds singing still and I am raking leaves in the half-light and smelling spring. It comes off the lake, I think, this scent. I can’t describe it in words really. Except to say that the smell in the air buoys me. I know what is coming and I drink it in with abandon.

Bring it, spring. The paper whites are one step ahead of you and the forsythia is ready to burst. That’s how I feel. Potential energy pushing so hard against my elbows and biceps and thighs. I am all pent up and have been snow-covered and cold for far too long.

I love the re-birth. And today is a big day for that. First day of the fourth quarter (really, how is that even possible?), and a clean state for all of the students. And the teacher! The beginning of spring brings the beginning of yard work, and I have a new yard this year in which to play. It will be a lot of work. And I will relish it.

And I am always reminded (although I need no special day) that I am ever changing. Spinning, growing, stretching towards the sun. Too many months and seasons and years I spent in darkness. And now I welcome the reach, the turning towards all that is bright and new and ME.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

The Inner Game of Running

Third time I’ve heard the starter’s pistol in my life. This time for the St. Malachi charity run downtown that it turns out I was totally unprepared for.

The beginning of a race is always tricky. I basically tried to get situated without falling in a pothole or getting mowed down by a more exuberant runner. And this time, we turned the first corner quickly and encountered a giant hill. I almost stopped right there. Avon Lake is among the flattest real estate in America, and I never train for hills. So from about thirty seconds in, till minute three or four, I was basically just trying to get to the outer lane so I could start walking. But something kept me going.

I made it up and over the Superior Bridge, sucking wind all the way. I finally caught my breath at the one-mile marker and kept chugging and churning toward the lake. For a cold March day immediately following a giant snowstorm, the race day surprised me with blue skies and clear streets.

The views were actually pretty spectacular and if I wasn’t so worried about where my next breath was coming from, I would have really enjoyed myself. We ran around the Brown’s Stadium and headed for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I knew that the turnaround was there; what I didn’t know was that it was on the far side and all the way down the 9th Street Pier.

Made it through the turnaround and that’s when the trouble started. Getting back to the finish line required a few hills. I didn’t notice the gradation so much on the way down, but man that hurt on the way back up. Minutes 36 through 46 were a sheer test of my will.

The inner game of running featured quite a cacophony in my head, me willing myself to keep moving. I quit a thousand times in those 10 minutes. I just kept saying “I’ll run to the stop sign” or “I’ll just run to that guy up there.” Quite a dialogue (make that tongue lashing) while my legs were turning to jelly and my breath was nowhere to be found.

I jogged back up over the Superior, but by this point I seemed more determined that I would actually keep running and finish the race. It wasn’t easy and it sure wasn’t pretty, but I finished five miles in just under fifty minutes.

The time and the t-shirt and the pizza at the end were hardly the best prizes of the day though. (Pizza as a post-race food? Really?) There is something really spectacular about doing the impossible, about doubting yourself and wanting to quit and KNOWING you are going to quit….and then NOT giving in.

It’s the Bible verse my dad always liked best: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” And it fits so well for running and for life. (And what would he say if he saw me racing, my bib number and hair flapping in the cold wind off the lake?)

It’s what I say when I run by myself: “Just keep churning.” And what I do when my kids drive me nuts. And what I think when my students do not listen.

There is something so powerful about making the impossible happen. About keeping up with the plan despite the odds. About finishing what you start.

Something so powerful that until today, I never really knew resided inside me.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Running for my Life

I did it. Signed up for a five-mile race. This is the way to do it, right before the event so there is no time to chicken out. Because I might, if I think about it too long. The course is tagged with a few good hills, and the route is right along the windy lakeshore. Five miles is a great length when I’ve been out with a pinched nerve and a tricky knee for months.

But I feel strong. And stupid. Or is that brave? A little of both really, with a mixture of amazement thrown in. I’ve been working for the last five or six weeks after a brief, unplanned hiatus, willing my muscles and my moxie to kick into gear. And it is finally paying off, in extra minutes tagged to the end of a run, or the completion of the beastly spinning class at the local Y.

And I cannot stop wondering. Who IS this woman who is sweating on a treadmill, forcing her knee and her wind and her heart to comply? Who IS this woman waking up before five to make the magic happen? Where has she been all my life, and is she willing to stick around now and go the distance?

Magic begets magic, and every mile brings me strength and pride. When the music is loud and the beat is strong, my legs comply to the cadence somehow and I will my breath to keep pace.

I smile while I run. You don’t see that often, but really I have not stopped being amazed at this new pastime in my life. And I smile so people wonder as I pass through puddles or work the treadmill. What could be going on behind that incongruous grin?

And even as I hear the weather report for the morning of the run and picture myself running on five inches of snow, I really am not all that deterred. Funny how life works. Doing things I’ve never dreamed with strength I never knew I had. And dealing with circumstances that are not at all ideal. And at the end of any run, I’m always glad to say: “I did it!”

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Perspective at the Meat Counter

I really need to stay out of the grocery store. Or at least stop going there by myself. When I don’t have to say “Sit still!” and “No!” and “We are not buying those today!” a million times to my children, I actually have time to look around and see my fellow shoppers.

And it invariably breaks my heart. Today it was the old man shuffling around in his sweats, his Irish tweed cap askew on his bushy white hair. He stopped for a long while at the paczki, picked up a box of apricot and then blueberry, but walked slowly away without them. We met up again at the deli and fish counter where he slowly sampled the crab dip and crackers laid out for customers. He didn’t buy anything there either.

His cart held just a few items. A miniature loaf of bakery bread, a few bananas, and a few other things I couldn’t make out from where I stood. I started to speak, but he turned before I got going and so I just gave up.

Turned my own cart and almost hit an older woman shopping alone. On the top of her cart were a bag of salad and a few boxes of fiber bars. She held her coat closed and her purse close to her chest. She was looking through the pork chops.

I don’t know why it makes me sad, to see these elderly solo shoppers. It’s my dream really. To shop alone and eat alone and buy exactly what I want at the grocery store: peacefully and on my own schedule.

But it always makes me wonder what I am missing. If the old man is finally getting away from his caregiver role for a bit, or the elderly lady is pinching her pennies hard. One glance and I am feeling their imagined pain. And I want to make it better with a donut or a smile.

But who’s to say that THEY aren’t the happy ones? That they are worried in similar ways about me, harried and unshowered and racing the clock to meet the school bus or the end of the pre-school class. Maybe the sadness I imagine in their eyes is really pity. And the memories of the difficult days they had when they were younger.

I think I will always struggle when I see these kind of shoppers. My empathy meets overdrive in grocery aisles. But perspective is a funny thing.

And maybe it really IS me who needs the donut. And the smile.

Monday, March 7, 2011

The Boy Whisperer

They find a quiet corner, these two, amid the cacophony of a giant pizza party. The school’s annual trip to Kalahari Water Park Resort, and the youngsters have finally dried off and are waiting for the pizza to cook. Four families, eleven kids, and five giant sheet pizzas, and it is definitely difficult to find a quiet nook.

I glance in her direction: my daughter with her long brown hair and hazel eyes, the tallest girl in her grade. She has left her girlfriends in the other room and is sitting cross-legged in front of the fire. And knee to knee with a boy in her class. My breath catches. Just for an instant I flash ahead five years. Or ten.

She is such a beauty. Despite my bias and a mother’s rose-colored glasses, I know this to be true. I am in for it, I know, for a young adulthood of boys and crushes and drama. I can see it here already. Her long tresses and tiny mouth, her eyes wrinkling just so at whatever he is saying. I am too far away to tell. He looks at her. She can’t help but return the gaze. And they sit for a while as if no one else is there.

I ask her later, what was there to say? They were talking about deer, she tells me. He is an avid hunter, a family trait and pastime. At eight years old, already killing creatures for sport. The art of the deer hunt is his best.

It makes her sad, to know this about her friend. He is the twin brother of one of her besties. She has known this hunting story for some time. And by the fire, she tells him how she loves deer. They come to her back yard, she explains. She watches them with her grandmother. And her little brother. She picked her bedroom for them, looked beyond the biggest room in the new house to choose the one with the view, perched above the back yard so she could always watch the deer.

I didn’t know this story at the time, but I saw how seriously they talked. And I didn’t know that her words would have such power. (Really, how could I not? She can move mountains with those words. And the passion in her voice.)

Later, the twin sister said “He likes you,” so like the boy/girl dramas of my past. But now this is MY little girl and her friends and stories. I can picture her smile light up and her cheeks grow red.

“So DO you like him?” I say to her that night, as we snuggle on the couch and recount the day’s events.

“Moo—mmm,” she rolls her eyes like only she can and says “He is my friend.”

Then she grins at me and her eyes sparkle as she says, “ AND, he told me that from now on he would only hunt for rabbits.”

Not quite sure how to take this, I didn’t know this would start so soon. But she is a girl who speaks her mind and is willing to go out on a limb. And already people are listening to her quiet intensity.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Facing Grace

Sometimes grace is barely a whisper, a miniature moment hardly discernible to the naked eye. But there are moments that throttle you, hyper speed and loud as thunder, and you know you will never be the same. That is the grace I found this week.

I can’t stop thinking about the Buddhists. “When the student is ready the teacher appears.” But I always seem to cast myself on the wrong side of the curtain. I know better this morning, with the sun finally shining in the cold March air and my limbs sore from my morning’s run. The glorious gift of a day spreads before me. And I have an entirely new view of the world.

It started innocently enough. I’ve been trying to eke out some spare change as a writer. Good for my bank account AND my self-esteem. Picked up a gig for the glossy Ignatius magazine, infrequent but fairly lucrative. My newest assignment seemed simple, a quick profile of an Ignatius grad who was injured in a diving accident.

But then the teacher appears. I arrive at the nursing home to meet him for a quick interview. And two and a half hours later, I exit his room and I know I will never be the same. In between I learn more about faith and resilience and hope than I can believe.

He’s paralyzed from the shoulders down. It’s been a year and half since he dove off the dock and changed his life forever. He can’t hug his family or pet his cat or scratch his nose. But what he can do? Man, does he shine. I have never met a man who spoke so passionately about his faith. And his idealism. And his love for his family. And the way his Bucket List changed from climbing Mount Everest and riding a bull to hugging his mother and building a home for other young quadriplegics like himself.

I cannot do him justice in writing. You have to be in the room with his energy and his unwavering faith to get the full affect. He’s not a Pollyanna and he’s no hero. Just a man who is making the best of the situation he’s in.

He told me he’s not afraid to pray big and make each day better than the last. That’s just the grace I need. Pray big. Work hard. Move slowly and surely in the direction of my dreams. Such a great lesson from such an amazing teacher.


Find some grace yourself: scottwfedor.com

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Chapter One

Anybody dying for Chapter Two!?!?!!?


Jessie rounded the bend at the corner of East Bayshore Road. Her metallic blue Civic took the turn easily. Her muscle memory and her car both knew this trip by rote. It had been a lifetime of Route 90 west from Cleveland to the first exit just over the Sandusky Bay. Right turn. Left turn. Then take it slow at the bend. This day was no different. The pangs of longing for her childhood hit her at the corner of the bend. Each time was the same. A tightness in her chest. Deep gulps for air. Slow car down to catch a glimpse of the yard she used to call home.

She had been coming to the cottage by the Bay since she was born, and although her father had sold it ten years earlier, she still made the hour-trip several times each season to the place her heart knew as home. Only these trips down memory lane were more about the beach and the old stone church and the restaurants nearby these days than getting close to the house. But she was hoping that was all about to change; the little piece of paper in her pocket urged her to quell her rule-following ways and get close to her holy history. To do that, she needed to get to that cottage by the bay.

Even the appearance hadn’t been the same since the house was sold. Of course the spirit of her Grandmother and the joys of that house were long gone, but Jess couldn’t believe what the new owners did to the yard. The yard disgusted her these days. Huge piles of quarry rock were heaped on either side of the gravel lane. There were rusted out machines strewn through the yard like some phantasmical modern art pieces. A back hoe sat in the shade of the weeping willow tree, right about the place where she used to lay and look at the clouds. Various metal bars and contraptions were planted where the garden used to be. The place was a mess.

The new owners had long ago posted No Trespassing signs, and she was a rule follower. She didn’t have the guts to turn down the long gravel road. So she let the Civic cart her past the house of her memories each time she was in town. Until today. When she hit the bend and slowed her car, her breathing quickened as always. But with the flutter came a feeling so strong, it was as if the car was magnetized to the lane. And so she turned. The hand she placed to her heart to stop its fluttering brushed the pocket where the worn paper was lovingly folded. She touched the corner to give herself courage.

At least the potholes were familiar. She slowed her speed as her car bounced down the lane, eyeing the corroded metal monuments as she drove. It was a quarter mile from the top of the lane to the little house by the Bay, this she could remember well. And the lane was only semi-private. After all, the mailman had to drive this way, and the water truck, and the UPS drivers. This was another way to link to South Olaf drive and the houses that lined the bay just west of the cottage. And so she continued, a metallic taste collecting in the back of her throat. She would make a terrible spy.
It was the garden that stopped her. Or really the pile of dirt. In her memories it was a dark earth filled with bone meal and fertilizers that housed some of the Bay’s best tomatoes and cukes. In reality now it was a weed-covered monstrosity filled with overgrown vines and several metal apparatuses that had seen better days. Jesse cringed. She quickly took her foot off the brake and let the car lurch forward. The pull was getting stronger. She was almost to the house.

One last bend in the gravel lane, past the raspberry bushes and apple trees, and then to park under the canopy of pear trees right in front of the house. She was losing her mind. She thought hard about throwing the car in reverse and hightailing it back down the lane. But she had come this far; she might as well see it to the end. She put the car in park, breathed in a deep cleansing breath, and slowly opened the door.
The house looked exactly the same. It never was much to look at growing up, but with the wear and tear of the past ten years, things were looking really bad. The paint was peeling from the tiny shed attached to the house. The shingles were sagging, and the front stoop was cracked and crumbling. But the pear tree was still standing sentry near the front door. And she was glad that at least something had stayed the same.

Although the front door was open, she could not detect any motion inside the house. Gauzy yellowed curtains blew in the gentle breeze. Her shirt stuck to her back as she tentatively exited the car. Now that she had made it this far her resolve really faltered. It wasn’t just the No Trespassing sign that had her worried. It was the quiet. The place seemed deserted. Empty soda cans and fast food wrappers were overflowing from a garbage can near the door. More machinery lay broken and toppled under the pear tree. All it needs is a growling dog in the window, her overactive imagination thought.

Suddenly, the quiet of the afternoon was jarred by the clanking of metal. Her nerves of jell-o almost pushed her back to the front seat of the car. Instead, she headed around the back of the house to where the noise had come from. She stopped cold in her tracks, a whoosh of appalled breath escaping her lungs. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. Gone was the beautiful view of the Bay she remembered so well. In its place was a circular ruins of rock and rusted out pipe that created a sort of runway for the dinky seaplane that barely sat upright. Perched at the edge of the Bay, the fledgling looked like a flight was the last thing in its future.

It took Jess a minute to focus on the cause of the noise. Out of the corner of her eye she watched a metal pipe fly through the air. She looked back to see the direction from which the pipe was thrown and she broke the silence with her startled cry. A man. There was no other word for him. Tanned and muscled, lean legs escaping his tattered jean shorts, he turned suddenly when she screamed in surprise. It wasn’t that she had never seen a man before. Or even been with one. It was just that she had never seen such an exquisite specimen, bronzed chest gleaming in the summer sun.
“Can’t you read?” he shouted.

She stood frozen, not sure how to reconcile the growling voice with the beauteous figure before her.

“I was just-“ he cut her off with a snarl.

“Just get out” he barked. “Get off my property. Now”

Her leaden feet refused to obey as his deep blue eyes clouded. Even in his anger he stood gloriously like Apollo in his chariot. She was dazzled by the brightness.
He stood from the pile of metal pipes, wiping rusty hands on his worn jeans. He was taller than she had first surmised. And at this height he was also more menacing. She took a few steps back.

“Its just that—“

“Its just that you are trespassing,” he growled, stepping towards her and forcing her back.

Jess was caught in the trance of the pipe in his hand and the way his biceps rippled as he beat it against his palm. She did not wait to find out what strength was behind his look.

“I…I….I’m sorry” she stammered apologetically as she rounded the bend of the house and all but sprinted back to the car. The driver’s door stuck as she hastily tried to climb in. The gravel dinged her back fender as she hightailed it back down the lane.
Tears stinging her eyes, Jess let the car lead her back the way she came and then around the next bend to the beach nearby. Though the piers were built when she was somewhere in her 20’s, the lake had not eroded the special spot in the sand dunes where she picnicked with her family so many years ago. The Corolla knew well the way there, and she gratefully arrived at the peaceful spot, limbs still trembling and eyes still misty.

She had been afraid that this would happen. The sale of the cottage ten years earlier had not gone smoothly. Tensions ran high on both sides, and her father had been forced to sell before he was ready. The new owners moved in with their seaplane and a giant chip on their shoulders. None of Jess’s relatives had driven down the lane since. She wasn’t even sure that the man had recognized her, she certainly had never laid eyes on him before. But she remembered that the new owners did have a son around his age. She just never imagined another human could be that unpleasant. And she didn’t really want to take another chance at such a difficult encounter.

But her history was calling. Bored with her humdrum life as an Engish teacher in the local high school, Jess had taken up the new hobby of genealogy several years earlier. She met a group at the library each week. They had vowed to keep each other motivated and moving through what was often a very painstaking, arduous task of studying old records and looking for artifacts among boxes of family junk.
It was on just such a junk-perusing mission that Jess had found the crumpled paper that now sat in her pocket, shielding her heart. She had been looking through a box that had been in her mother’s attic for longer than she could remember. The box was filled with scraps of material, muslins and wools that had seen better days, piles of old buttons and pincushions obviously made when her mother was a little girl. In her haste to glance at the contents and set the box aside, Jess pricked her finger on one of the haphazardly placed pins. She grabbed quickly at some white muslin to staunch the bleeding, and as it unfurled a small folded piece of faded paper floated to the ground.

For someone such as Jess, the paper really was a gold mine. A youngish spinster who was still very willing to walk down the aisle, Jess spent her days in a predictable routine. Her alarm rang at six on the dot, her coffee pot already humming, and her towel awaiting her exit on the towel warmer by the shower door. She taught five English classes each day, willing her students to care about appositives and comma splices and subject/verb agreement. She headed home to a quiet house after working on the yearbook for an hour and calling parents of delinquent students. She didn’t even have a cat. Supper was simple pasta or soup and a sandwich. After dinner Jess would grade papers for a while and watch her favorite “Wheel of Fortune” before preparing to do it all the next day.

But as Jess sat in the sand and sun this particular summer morning, willing her racing heart to quiet and her limbs to be still, she thought about her mundane life and how the paper might very well be the key to a little excitement for her. Although she was clearly disappointed that she had struck out at first, she was pretty sure that she had found a map. And it wasn’t a lost treasure she was seeking. She would be happy with a little something out of the ordinary and a little excitement to call her own.

All I (K)need

What happens to a dream deferred? Or a dream put on the back burner while Christmas and moving and life barge in? Well the dream dries up a little. The heart is still there but the pieces don’t all fit. This is like me and my running.

After my late fall debacle of missing the racing registration deadline, my training has gone south in a giant basket of…well, laundry! And boxes and boxes of life. Man that is harder than it looks: to move an entire family into a new place.

And now I am somewhat settled and ready to roll but my aging body is mocking me. I love the irony. My knee is still all wonked out. Didn’t hurt a bit in eight months of running last year but started hurting on my long run in November and now every time I get to mile one, the pain greets me like an old deranged friend. Pretty mad about that.

Started the half-marathon training program (AGAIN!!!--This time to run an ACTUAL half marathon instead of a carbon dioxide sucking, rainy/hailing 13 miles down Lake Rd. by myself) but not sure if I can do it.

The funny thing, though, is that I am determined. A woman who would only run while being chased a year ago is willing her uncooperative body to get on board. Exercising is harder than it should be and I am doing it anyway. Instead of giving in I am working to circumvent the knee, find other ways to fit in cardio and time in my day for icing and lifting. Kind of surprising, if I do say so myself.

All is not lost. Those miles last summer (and miles and miles) taught me something big. Keep at it. Keep breathing. Keep churning. And I am stronger than I thought.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

My Most Useful Skills

1. spelling things.
2. dodging the issue.
3. making turkey lemon cutlets.
4. keeping the peace.
5. eating ice cream.
6. writing lists. and paragraphs.
7. cleaning up messes.
8. making messes.
9. making oatmeal.
10. shoveling snow.
11. packing boxes.
12. unpacking boxes.
13. packing away dreams.
14. saving for a rainy day.
15. stirring chocolate milk.
16. stirring up trouble.
17. applying band-aids.
18. running slowly.
19. burning toast.
20. remaining at rest.