Appreciating Teaching

Today is Teacher Appreciation Day, a day for Chipotle to give out free burritos and for little children to bring in fistfuls of tulips to their favorite teachers.  Not a bad sentiment really, (although I apologize to my offsprings’ mentors since we did not remember the tulips or burritos on this hurried Tuesday morning.)

Today, however, I think it is a good day to appreciate BEING a teacher. This often-debated job is a great way to make a living….and a life.

I always say that teaching is a game of moments. In the past eighteen years, there have definitely been moments that have brought me to my knees, stolen my breath, made me laugh, cry and feel.  There have been moments when I was positive that this was the exact WRONG job for me, and moments when this career could not be more right. I have seen things that I wish their parents could: a moment of discovery, a smile of pride, an act of friendship. And I have seen countless moments that the students never thought I thought I noticed: the most heart-warming kindnesses, and the most heinous of bullying.

I am humbled to think that around 1200 students have sat in the desks in front of me over these many years. They have all left a piece of themselves behind. I remember Chris’s metaphor that blew me away: “The football field is an angry boy’s heaven.” Or the way I hugged Bridget as she sobbed about her grandma. I can remember Geoff’s poetry analysis of William Carlos Williams like it was yesterday, although 17 years have passed since he last left my class. Or the way Amanda gave a fantastic speech about a serious illness that had changed her life.

Through nearly two decades, I hope that I have shared my love of communicating, that they all know where to place the commas and how to write with imagery. I hope they can find a metaphor in a story, and always remember to get the work done first before they play.

But I don’t think they understand how I love them. How I pray for these students past and present and what will happen to them. How I hope that the lessons and discipline I have tried to instill will ripple when they leave my class. How I wish for them a job that offers moments like they have offered me: the beautiful glimpses of life and discovery that leave you with goosebumps and tears. And the knowledge that they are working towards something greater than themselves. And I even wish them the hard stuff too, which makes the good moments that much sweeter.

I am still in awe of the paths these students have taken. Joe is doing art gallery showings in San Francisco, and Maggie is choreographing musical theatre in Chicago. Bryan is a busines man in Columbus, and Emily is studying architecture in New York City. Bridget is returning home to find a kindergarten teaching job, and Kyle is serving our country in Afghanistan. So many choices and paths and moments, makes me appreciate our cosmic intersection in time.

So yes, I appreciate teaching. I appreciate the learners that have graced these desks, and the lessons they have revealed to me. I appreciate the words they have written and the trust they have shown me. I admire their moxy and the energetic lenses through which they see the world. A burrito or tulip won’t be enough to say it today, but I am thankful for all of them and all of the moments we have shared.

#50in50

I love the ways that ideas form, taking root in the darkness of my mind and germinating like these tentative fronds I see popping up in the soil on this second day of spring. I am like those hesitant flowers. Long winters of my life have passed, while I had myself convinced that I had to be snowed in. Now the great thaw has come and I see that the re-birth of spring can be a moment of eternity for me.

There is a storm brewing in my heart. Somewhere between an offhanded conversation with a friend and a resurrection of my running and a belief in the power of the moments of my life, a big dream has been born: 50 half-marathons in 50 states. The distance is doable, the challenge is great, and I am buoyed by the idea that I am just south of crazy. A laudable goal, and the devil is certainly in the details. The timeline stretches five years, maybe longer if needed, and all will be done long before my fiftieth birthday.

I laugh that this is a dream with my name on it at all. Somehow it is running that makes me feel most alive. It is what separates me from my former self and creates a sense of power and strength. I remember my first run like it was yesterday. Laced up my Target sneakers as a storm was brewing..…in my heart and in the sky. Four years have passed and I am still in awe of myself as a runner.

On May 9, 2010 I wrote: “I run as though my life depended on it. And as the storm pounds closer I can see that it does. The sky rips open top to bottom, like pale flesh covering thoracic cavity, and every bump in the road is illuminated. For an instant. Then the sky plunges to black and my feet struggle for balance.

I keep running. The wind chases me now. I turn the corner and head for home. I’m not in it for the distance tonight. It is too new and too raw. But now I see. There is more to me than I already know. Some strange strength is gathering like the roiling clouds blowing in from the west.”

That strength  is certainly brewing. The goal is lofty, my mind is in the game (even if a mere nine days out from state one’s race in Michigan, I am icing my leg and gimping down the hallway.) Dreams have a way of working out. And if my dream is to “suck the marrow from life” as my favorite Thoreau has said, then I will certainly make it.  He said, “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” My finger is on the GO button of this dream, and I am ready to ride some waves.

Ice Garden

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What are memories made of? The sun glints on the snow and from my school desk I can see the ice is building up on the lake. The polar vortex has brought ice early this year, wreaking havoc with the water supply and our school days and my memories.  The present is entangled in the past for me on this January day. Sitting in my eighth grade classroom at the biggest desk with rolling chair, the view from my window brings me back to the eighth grader I was when my world was turned upside down. Twenty-nine years is a long time to miss her, and I am literally back where I started, remembering the day my sweet grandmother died.

How is she still so powerfully with me, this woman with the map of Ireland on her face? Maybe it is because I was just talking with a friend about her. How she taught me how to do the work first: woke me up at six in the morning, fed me coffee laden with milk, and set me on my tasks for the day. We rode the tractor, weeded the garden, made the beds, cooked the lunch and put dinner on the stove. Worked hard first so that by 3:00 we were already settled in to read our mystery books on the porch, or fish off the dock with a bamboo pole.

But maybe it is something more. Her spirit is here, the way she twinkled when she spoke, the way she stood up for her beliefs, the way she made a little mischief along the path she chose. She dabbled in writing, and power tools, and making friends, and breathing in nature.  She drove her husband crazy, and never could understand all of his political and upper class dealings. She was a simple woman with a simple faith and a very large sense of who she was. Maybe she is not so far away after all. I recognize her in my grown up self, and the miracle is that the passage of time could make this so.

As my dad always said, “It’s all part of nature, you see.” But it still makes me marvel. How could a woman who spent so little time with me on this planet have had such a powerful impact? She planted the seeds: read me books, fed me pudding and beef soup, showed me how to wear a hard hat under the pear tree at the end of the lane so we wouldn’t get hit by the falling fruit. She helped the hopeless and spoke her mind and never stopped appreciating the apple trees and the starry nights and the hardening ice upon the bay where she lived.  She made her corner of the world shine.

And she nurtured a granddaughter that would stand the test of time. Somehow, I think, a garden left untended for nearly thirty years would be infested and overgrown and unkempt. But these deep roots she gave me have kept her alive, and molded the woman I have become: through my writing, my ornery side, my love of the outdoors, and in my own children who join me amid the tomato plants and sand castles and snow balls.

The ice outside my window today reminds me of the circle of nature. And I can attest that in some ways I am back where I began when she left too soon. But I am much closer to this woman in my heart, the one who taught me to work and play and laugh and believe. And I think she might be proud of the way her garden is shaping up.