Bending Time

Ninja Runner

2012-01-30T20:54:00.000-05:00

I am sure everyone has been waiting with baited (or would that be bated?) breath to find out my diagnosis from the physical therapist this morning. I was pretty anxious myself, and the irony of getting hurt just as I started training for the BIG RACE is still frustrating.

But the appointment was good. Stephen was very patient and informative and I am seeing the silver lining that this is a time to learn to do things the right way and to strengthen and stretch my body as it deserves. Apparently I do not have an injury, break, dislocation or other malady that will keep me from running. My issue is mechanical, and with time and information I should be able to rehab to run long again. (I am doing my best to forget the running log and the 5 miler I SHOULD have been doing today for marathon training, but I did manage a strong one mile run with no pain and some strength work today.) And of course, in the office, my knee did not even hurt in all the tests he ran.

As I was reading my son his bedtime story tonight, The Official Guide of Ninjago, Master of Spinjitzu, I realized that I could use the rules of ninjas to guide me through the next few months as a runner.

1. Comfort is a thing of the past. Well, yes. Not only will I feel this twinge for the foreseeable future, if I do my workouts the RIGHT way I will be burning and gasping (in a good way, right?). And if I rehab to the point of being able to do 26.2, then comfort will truly leave me.

2. To rush is to fail. I am fighting the urge to do too much too soon. My one-mile run felt good today and I wanted to continue. I can’t wait to try again tomorrow and see how my knee responds. But I think that taking it easy will be better in the long run. My physical therapist and my muscles think so too.

3. Moderation in all things. This is a no-brainer. I always battle taking things to the extreme: whether Girl Scout cookie eating or logging miles or planning the perfect activity with my kids. If I slow down (see rule 2) and relax, I can build a strong base for the future, through moderation.

4. Calm before the storm. I cannot let my emotions rule me. I still feel disappointed. At age 40 I have spent the past two years changing my life. The marathon was the final hurdle. And now this. But I will make my choices and work out without emotion ruling. Que sera sera.

5. Discipline. Ninjas must be organized, respectful and industrious in all things. As the mother of three and a teacher, I must organize my time even more carefully to do extra stretching and prepare myself for smaller goals leading to my ultimate marathon goal. And I have to have the discipline to understand that my goal might need to change, based on the needs of my body.

So ninja, it is! New Asics kicks instead of ninja-wear, but the same commitment to the journey and the bravery to keep out the dark forces (in this case doubt, disappointment and further injury.) Following the five rules should prepare me for whatever comes my way!

A Bump in the Road

2012-01-26T08:38:00.000-05:00

Oh no! This is my worst fear as a runner. And it is happening in week two of marathon training. I am so disheartened and resisting the constant urge to cry: something is wrong with my knee.

I have been working out 4 or 5 times a week steadily for the last several months. I varied my routine with swimming, elliptical, bike, boot camp, short and long runs, slowly and for speed. I was doing everything right, or so I thought.

And then it happened. The last four runs or so, it feels like my knee is going to burn up and explode right off my body. Nothing specific happened, no twist or injury that I can recall. And I am an optimist: when I first felt the twinge I figured if I just kept moving the pain would go away. That did not happen. I have been trying to ignore this and refusing to admit it to myself. I have an injury that must be attended.

I can run through the pain (apparently I am stronger than I thought….or maybe just stupider.) But when I did my seven miles Sunday and couldn’t walk up the stairs to the bedroom later, I figured I needed to do something.

I am waiting on a physical therapist appointment and working on my upper body and trying to not get depressed. In an ironic twist, I also have a head full of a terrible cold, so I don’t really feel like jumping in the pool.

Although I usually specialize in teaching grammar and writing, I am thinking this is my IT band. Any thoughts or ideas would be gratefully appreciated.

As Langston Hughes said, “What happens to a dream deferred?” I’m not too excited by the answer.

Runner: Noun (from the Old English) meaning "strong" and "flow"

2012-01-21T19:37:00.001-05:00

Bill the salesman is a quality guy. I know this because I am standing in his specialty store for runners, Second Sole, and HE is obviously a runner, and I am obviously NOT a runner, am I am trying to choke out the words “I am a runner” and he is not even poking fun. I don’t understand why this is so hard for me. I know what the dictionary says about being A RUNNER. A runner is a person who runs. And I do that. I really do. I have run two half-marathons in the past year and countless three milers and six milers and a good baker’s dozen of ten milers throughout the past few months. I have run in the woods and the rain and in the heat and on a treadmill and on the sand and by myself and in a crowd or with only an early-morning deer or skunk for company. But still I choke on this sentence.

But now it is time to grow up and show up, and officially become what I already am: a runner. So I am standing in front of Bill who is holding back a smile while I stammer and stutter and tell him I need new running shoes. Maybe THIS is the rub. Running is the sport that requires the LEAST equipment and I haven’t been doing even that much right.

My first pair of shoes when I started this new trend in my life two years ago was an eighteen dollar Target pair that was on sale for nine bucks. They served me well, those no name shoes, and helped me to fall in love with the sport. And I even ran my first 13.1 in them. I stepped on a nail when I was eight miles in, and finished the last five with a nail protruding from the bottom corner. Stubborn girl, this one. (I knew that if I stopped to pull it out I would never start back up again!)

I advanced a bit in the last year to the Asic’s gel shoes I found at Kohl’s with my thirty percent off coupon. They’ve gotten me through a lot of early morning miles and trips through the paved woods path near my home. They have gone the distance, (pun intended) but since I have been keeping up with this new sport that I love to hate, I know it is time to buy some big girl kicks.

So here I am, my stomach in a knot, my pulse racing, and sweet William is nodding his head and smiling. Bill examines my feet, takes a look at my stance and stride, and measures my foot size by sight. (This amazes me and makes me feel like I am in the right place, although this is actually his JOB, so why am I so surprised?)

He brings out five pairs and I love them all. (Smart man, this Bill.) I am sure the other customers enjoy my wind sprint trials through the apparel section, but I finally narrow it down to two: the Asics 21700 STORM with purple laces and the Adidas Supernova Sequence Y. I love them both. As I always have trouble making decisions, and they are both the same price, I close my eyes at the checkout and have Bill ring up whichever he chooses.

I walk out with the Asics (I think they are a bit more comfortable anyway, though you'll have to ask me after a 15 mile training run in a few weeks), a few of Bill’s suggestions for IT band stretches (the sore knee a major reason I went there in the first place), and a smile. And maybe, just maybe, there is a little swagger in my step and a bit of confidence in myself as a runner.

When my 350 miles are up and I go back for more, there is no doubt. I’m buying the bright orange Adidas. Now THAT will make my career as a runner official!

Eyes on the Prize

2012-01-10T20:27:00.003-05:00

Cleveland in January 2012 is a runner’s paradise. I had been beginning to question my sanity at settling on the late May Cleveland Marathon (although my original thought process was that in the summer I could then TOTALLY relax after teaching and training for 26.2 for months. Oh, and train for a triathlon. But that's a story for a different day.) I was starting to picture miles and miles on the treadmill with nothing to entertain me except the YMCA television set to the weather channel. Really, how much of the same revolving radar can one girl stand? But THIS kind of January is perfect for me.

Running outside is my thing. I am a nature girl to start with, having been the one to cut the grass and plant the gardens from a very tender age. I just love the fresh air and sunshine and even the bleak foreboding skies that signal storms. My very first run was on a dark and stormy night, in fact. I just always seem to hit my groove faster in the great outdoors.

No matter what time of year, though, it is not easy for me to train. As a teacher and mother I have offered up the time after school to the grading gods and since the fairies have yet to make it to my house, I am also in charge of dinner and homework and general mayhem control at home after school. Therefore, I covet the morning for training time.

I have a love/hate relationship with an alarm that rings at 4:30 in the morning. I can’t stand getting out of the warm cocoon but I am amazed by the power a quick morning run gives me. It sometimes ends up being the only thing I accomplish in a day, but it is a biggie.

And to run the last few early mornings outside is a rare January treat. I am saving the big guns for the Hal Higdon “18 Weeks to Glory” program I will begin next week. (Oh boy, I hope I counted right.) But there is something truly magical about running in the moonlit darkness, dodging the leaping deer and scuttling ground hogs and slow-moving paper man that I inevitably find in my morning run.

I am an optimist and thinking hard about how long I can milk this good weather. On a sunny day with temperatures almost near 50, even the 5 a.m. run feels pretty good. I could use a whole winter of this. Because when my days start off with some purposeful exercise, I have enough energy to grab my running shoes AFTER work too and race my sons around the cul-de-sac. The seven year old skunked me in the race, but the golden orange sky of the setting sun was an amazing prize.

The Short List for 2012

2012-01-01T22:02:00.002-05:00

1. Re-lose the fifteen pounds I have gained and lose four more.
2. Towpath Trilogy, Cleveland Marathon, triathlon.
3. More Scooby Doo Trouble, painting, piano duets, active listening, flashcards, and fun with my kids.
4. Date night and DTL with my husband.
5. Get paid to write.
6. Eat like a marathoner.
7. Leave it all on the field. Stop holding back.
8. Turn off the Facebook.
9. Clean and organize the house. Always.
10. Spend face time with friends.

A Game of Moments

2012-01-01T21:37:00.004-05:00

The pork has been devoured, and the saukerkraut put away. The children are nestled early in bed. This happens when four year olds stay up till midnight to watch Lady Gaga drop the ball. Try explaining THAT one. And now for the resolving, the goal setting, the looking back over the previous year.

It seems that I did not make ANY resolutions at the beginning of 2011. Or at least I didn’t write them down! Not that I didn’t do new things or work hard, but I just didn’t seem to plan these things at the turn of last year. I savored some victories through the past months, and dragged my feet in defeat a few times too. But I don’t really want to dwell there.

The new year is here, and I am ready to roll. I even get an extra day to make the magic happen this year!! The first things that come to mind are easy: the physical ones. They seem easy because I have already planned them and plunked down the cash. (Cash is a big motivator.) The big game is the MARATHON. Yes, you read that correctly. Twenty-six point two miles. The date is May 20th, and I am already training. Part of my training is participating in the Towpath Trilogy, three races that span 2012 and the beautiful Towpath trails of Greater Cleveland. The first half-marathon is April 1 (a day for fools, of course.) Also, my pal Patrick is getting me hooked into a triathlon sometime in August when the lake heats up. In between these big ticket days I anticipate a lot of running at the crack of dawn, a few 5K’s and smaller races, and some fatigue. (By some I mean A LOT.) For someone who just started running a year and a half ago, I still marvel that these are my goals. Although these are physical goals, I already know that they are changing my heart. I never dreamed this was possible, and now I constantly wonder what ELSE I thought I could not do.

Along with the physical training, I resolve to take control. I am the kind of person who can look up marathon training tips while eating an entire plate of cookies. That needs to stop. As Pat and I say, “What would a marathoner eat?” I am thinking it is not an entire bag of Funyons or a whole box of Malley’s chocolates. (I am so quick like that!) I would like to think about food as fuel instead of reward, to make the machine of my body work well with the right fuel. If I pull this off, it should result in a few more pounds lost, and a few more muscles gained. Pretty integral for my fortieth year.

The other resolutions are seemingly harder, and more important. They involve my children and my friends and my attitude. I would like to be more hands on with my kids. More games of Scooby Doo Trouble, more piano duets with my daughter, more saying yes to painting, and ship-building and CREATIONS. This will involve more living in the moment and being present. They grow up too fast and I want to hang on to these moments, and to truly live them. I can worry about the dishes after bedtime. I’d like to write more letters to my friends and drink coffee with them on purpose and meet for dinner. Real relationships and moments savored can take the place of too much dawdling on the computer or worrying about tomorrow.

I’d like to stop saving my energy for later. I seem to always hold back because of what I might need to do in the future, with my friends or my housework or my school work. What if I get too tired? Well, what if I do? I resolve to live more full throttle and nap LATER. More doing what matters and living each minute.

The list is already too long. There is more in my heart and my head. But this is a good start. What if I just live each moment with gratitude and purpose? I’ve learned a lot this year about my self and my story. I know how blessed I am and I want to prove that in the way I live each day. I get to do this. And I am so very thankful for all that I have.

Love in My Pocket

2011-12-23T09:59:00.002-05:00

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.

Hitting Return

2011-12-22T16:11:00.002-05:00

“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.

This is Just to Say

2011-12-04T20:56:00.003-05:00

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)

I Get To Do This

2011-12-01T08:29:00.002-05:00

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!

Shaken, But Not Stirred

2011-11-15T08:30:00.000-05:00

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.”

Loud and Desperate

2011-11-07T21:59:00.004-05:00

”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.

(Not Quite) Silver Spoons

2011-09-14T21:15:00.000-04:00

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.

A Million Ways to Die

2011-09-08T09:49:00.001-04:00

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.

Of Helicopters and Leeches

2011-09-01T09:57:00.006-04:00

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.

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

2011-08-31T20:58:00.001-04:00

“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.

Tell Me About Your Child

2011-08-24T21:06:00.002-04:00

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.

Dear Parents:

2011-08-19T16:42:00.003-04:00

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!

Things I Never Thought I Would Have to Do

2011-08-17T18:52:00.003-04:00

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.

Ready to Roll

2011-08-16T22:44:00.003-04:00

“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.

Reflections

2011-07-30T21:52:00.001-04:00

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.

Delicious Language

2011-07-29T21:35:00.000-04:00

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!

Portrait of the Artist as a (Very) Young Man

2011-07-20T18:50:00.001-04:00

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.

Dear to Me

2011-04-05T21:08:00.001-04:00

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.

It Only Hurts.....

2011-03-31T13:43:00.001-04:00

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.

Showing Up

2011-03-27T20:20:00.001-04:00

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.

-in just spring

2011-03-21T20:48:00.000-04:00

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.

The Inner Game of Running

2011-03-13T20:27:00.001-04:00

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.

Running for my Life

2011-03-11T13:08:00.002-05:00

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!”

Perspective at the Meat Counter

2011-03-08T19:46:00.001-05:00

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.

The Boy Whisperer

2011-03-07T20:13:00.001-05:00

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.

Facing Grace

2011-03-02T10:22:00.004-05:00

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

Chapter One

2011-02-24T19:27:00.002-05:00

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

2011-02-24T12:17:00.000-05:00

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.

My Most Useful Skills

2011-01-23T11:06:00.002-05:00

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.

Great Full

2010-11-25T22:35:00.000-05:00

Gratitude, according to the dictionary, is not a verb. But I see it as an action nonetheless. Obviously this is a good time of year to be grateful; November always works for me in this capacity. My birthday month, its the time of year that I am forced inside to ponder the passage of time. And as the weather chills and the days get shorter, I must deal with life at a slower pace. The school year is in full swing, and my freneticism as a teacher and mother have finally settled down. Plus it’s kind of hard to miss the giant inflatable turkeys and cornucopias of thanks.

I am thankful for the usual of course. My family and friends top the list, especially my children. I am thankful for peanut butter kisses from the three year old, and the artful way he bedecks the entire house with a roll of toilet paper. I admire the drawings and comedic timing of his brother, and the attention to details my daughter pays.

As the pile of birthday candles grows bigger and I reflect on a health scare this summer, I am growing ever more appreciative of my health and the strides I will take to hold on to it.

But I think the gift that strikes me the most this year is that of re-creation. I started last November when I took that National Novel Writing Challenge. I wrote fifty thousand words in a month and created a pretty interesting story, if I do say so myself. (Which I have to, because no one else has yet read it!)

I’m not sure if that sustained writing and achievement of a goal was really the springboard, but by the time the first of the year rolled around, I was ready to start my whole life anew. I have spent the last ten months literally re-creating myself.

I think I am so thankful because this is still so shocking to me. I have changed my way of thinking, the shape of my body, and the spirit that breathes within me. And I have done this myself. I just never really thought it was possible to do a total u-turn on the road I was traveling.

Gratitude is an action. I believe this wholeheartedly. When I run, when I breathe, when I write, when I believe, I am drinking in the moment. And I am also proving to the universe that I both appreciate it and deserve it.

And a million trillion others just like it. And I will be grateful for each of those too!

My Resurrection

2010-10-12T11:24:00.001-04:00

Somewhere between the two-dozen portolets and the sea of spandex, I realized that I was about as far outside of my comfort zone as I could get. What started as a lark one stormy night almost exactly five months before had led me to the starting line of the Towpath Marathon’s 10 K race. The air was crisp, the autumn leaves danced, and the anonymity of the throng of people helped calm my thudding heart. I’m sure I was the only one wearing nine-dollar Target running shoes. And clutching my i-pod as though my life depended on it. Really, it kind of did.

The gun went off. Or did it? Not really sure if there even was a starter’s pistol, but as the crowd surged forward I knew the race was underway. The beginning was treacherous. A sea of humanity jockeying for position and trying to set a personal pace. I ran unscathed through the first madness, settling in fairly quickly with a speed I knew I could keep. And then the smiling started. The sunrise was beautiful, pinks and oranges still tickling their way above the line of trees. And the road was flat, dipping only slightly to give me a view of the hundreds in front of me. We ran three miles like this, scuttling for position, passing and being passed. I never stopped giggling.

The real fun started on the Towpath trail, a crushed limestone snake of a thing that flanked the river. I ran under towering bridges and beneath the reddest of leaves. The day was simply gorgeous, dappled light playing on the river and the path ahead. The five-mile marker shocked me. I had no idea I had already run that far.

Who knew I would have some juice left to kick it into high gear for the last mile? I passed a few last opponents with the finish line in view. A glorious feeling, really, to cross those rubber mats at the end of six plus miles. And something I could have never believed about myself.

The adjustment mentally has been even harder than the physical exertions of molding my body into that of a runner. The weight was easy to lose. The calves tightened themselves. But my heart? That is a lot trickier to manipulate. That morning on the Towpath cemented what I myself could not: the feeling that I am a runner and I can accomplish things I never thought possible.

My new training has already begun: 13.1 miles is my next goal, a half-marathon. This sounds too ridiculous to say out loud. But secretly, I know I can make this magic happen. I am not the same woman who started that race on the Towpath. I’m really hitting my stride, it seems. The Resentments song on my i-pod says it all: “Just a step. One small step. A leap of faith. And a resurrection.”

Roughly

2010-09-14T13:26:00.001-04:00

Almost, some writing on a Tuesday.
The stutter steps of crunching acorns
Surround the brilliant blues of sky and mood.
And there is almost within me some (w)hole.

Tuesday’s child is full of grace
And that is inside me from the start
But the only thing that comes to mind is:
“I will pelt you with rocks and garbage.”

And it is Tuesday almost and time to fling these thoughts
Like acorns and watch them explode into the fire of nearly

Fall. And a million and's and but's and missteps
Crunching leaves and ideas and acorn hats until
I lean to pick the pieces from my shoes and almost
Fall myself.

Back to School

2010-08-31T19:46:00.002-04:00

It’s not quite as bad as last year. Sure there is screaming and gnashing of teeth. (Okay, mostly mine.) And there are little people who refuse to go to sleep at bedtime, thereby making it much harder to wake them up in the early reverie. And there are some wardrobe malfunctions. Shoes that fit three days ago at the store will not find their way onto feet that need to walk out the door in five minutes. And there are routines to re-establish. Lunches are packed and clothes laid out the night before amid a lot of whining and griping.

But really, it’s not quite as bad as last year.

This is the time of year that tries a mother’s patience. Add to that the fact that I am a teacher AND a mother, and I have my own lunch to pack and clothes to lay out, and things can get really harried.

But they are growing up, I think. The middle guy’s in kindergarten, and happy as a clam to be going to school all day, walking to and fro with his big sis. She, for her part, has made it “upstairs” as a second grader, and seems able to handle the homework planner and guiding her brother to and from school. Even the baby, a misnomer if I ever heard one, is getting his act together for pre-school and excited about his Spider Man book bag and new friend Isaac.

We still have occasional screaming and tantrum-throwing, lost forms and lost patience, but the transition is as good as can be expected.

I think the patient will survive this crisis.

Around the Corner

2010-08-29T20:28:00.001-04:00

My legs are churning, heart racing. This asphalt path is good for speed. Acorns already litter the smooth course and the evening light falls faster into shade. I round a sharp corner and gasp so loudly that the man in front of me turns to see if I have fallen. I cannot take my eyes off the ball of fire dipping into the sky. It falls so fast, too fast for me to get a glimpse of it around the next bend. I content myself with the one moment of sheer beauty that I have witnessed, the brightest of red against the backdrop of blue sky and jagged trees.

Just around the corner. It could be my mantra these days. I am on the brink. “It” with a capital I is just around the corner. I don’t kid myself. It is not always so glamorous as a perfectly setting sun. Last week I rounded a bend on my bike and almost got clocked by the Superintendent of schools dragging himself home after a long day. A few days before that I scared the hell out of a deer and myself when I hit a curve too quickly.

But just around the bend works for me. And I’m an optimist, so I imagine they’ll be more royal sunsets than near collisions. So many lessons for me these days. So many things just around the corner. And they are not lost on me.

It’s the getting on the path that does the most good. Being there. In the moment.. Moving forward to see what might be there. Breathing deeply. Crunching acorns.

And waiting to see what is up ahead, around the next bend.

Magical Memories

2010-08-28T21:25:00.001-04:00

Another perfect day at the beach. The usual summer fare. But this one is slightly different, filled with a myriad of emotions and some old family friends. The usual players are along too: my tow-headed boys, their bronzing sister, the giant blue shovel and a big pile of buckets. Today the waves are tiny, the carpet of algae barely moves on the surface of the lake.

The story starts too long ago to recount, in a stark hospital where our mothers shared both nursing duties and friendship. And then their children came along and our mothers shared us too. Our big thing was Catawba, where each summer both families enjoyed cottages and beach towels, corn on the cob cook-outs and candy hidden in trees for the children to hunt. The years passed as they always do and we kids drifted in and out of each other’s lives like the boats on the waves where we used to play.

Until today. The winds have carried us right back to where we started. And here we meet on the same beach on which we played as children. Only now we are the grown-ups and our children are running and digging and frolicking in the surf.

My eyes are drawn to the girls: my daughter and his daughter, twins in more ways than one. (He is the oldest son of my mother’s friend. Many years ago, he and I spent more than our share of time in his aluminum boat together. We talked, fished, giggled. Almost lost our lives one hot stormy afternoon when lightning came close. And there was other heat too. But that is a story for another day.) Today it is his daughter and mine, running down the sand in tandem, chasing sea gulls.

They are relentless in their pursuit, single-minded. They deem the gray seagulls the slowest, so they focus their energies there. They share the intensity of oldest children and an interest in following rules. They look back to judge their distance from the group. But then the rock-throwing starts and (who would believe) they hit a sea gull on the tail feather. They are funny in their lukewarm remorse, softening the blows with guilty looks and shy smiles for each other’s parents.

Later we leave the beach and the girls walk hand in hand. How does this happen after a few short hours together? But really it is more. There is history here, a past they couldn’t possibly know. But perhaps like muscle memory, they understand beyond their capabilities what has come before.

We return to the cottage and they rinse the sand and suntan lotion from their sun-kissed skin. They shake their own tail feathers and giggle as they dress; only girls of this age could pull this off.

The night ends with ice cream, as any perfect summer day requires. The two sit shoulder to shoulder, sharing licks and sharing secrets. I feel sad, really, because I know how far apart they live. And the magic of Catawba will not transcend the miles, I’m afraid.

As we say our good-byes, I catch the eye of my old friend. His face reflects my own amazement and uncertainty. What a day it has been for connections and re-visiting the past through the eyes of the future. What a day for our daughters. And I catch the twinkle in his eye and think that maybe the magic of Catawba may prevail after all.

The Bruise

2010-08-15T10:12:00.000-04:00

“It only hurts when I touch it.” My kids say that all the time, while sporting the latest scrape, bruise, or scratched-into-oblivion bug bite. I always wonder why they just don’t touch it!

And it’s the same with me tonight. I’m enjoying a family party with the Irish cousins. We don’t get to see them all the time, but they are the sort of people you catch right up with as though you’ve never left. It’s the kind of party where all the kids play in the basement and resurface only to replenish their sugar supply and the grown-ups sit around a big table drinking and telling tales. Fun for everybody.

The patriarch Kevin sits surrounded by his children, cousins and older grandchildren. We are all trying to stay out of the rain. My daughter emerges from the basement and bounds over, happily oblivious to my presence at the table. She stops short of Kevin, with the shy face I know means she knows what she wants but not quite how to go about it. Then she silently climbs onto his lap with a grin.

And in that quick instant my breath stops. He looks so frail under the weight of her braided pigtails. And she looks so serene on his lap. And I wish with all my might that it was my dad. And she had a grandpa. And it is a twisting blade, this desire for my dad and his plaid shirt and my smiling daughter on HIS lap.

But it only hurts when I touch it.

Dear August

2010-08-01T16:54:00.001-04:00

You don’t scare me. You, with your back-to-school sales and disappearing daylight, your sense of foreboding for a lady who is both a teacher and a mom of three kids who are going to school. I suppose I’m supposed to drop everything and rush to buy your twenty-five cent crayons and drag the offspring to squish their freedom feet into starchy shoes. But I’ve still got my hands taped and I’m not going down without a fight.

I think I’ve really tasted victory this summer. I’ve taken on your J and J brothers and kicked them all over this sunny town. And country! Who needs a straw? I’m sucking marrow from a PVC pipe and loving the heck out of these hot summer days.

We’ve frolicked at the beach. Lake AND ocean. Dominated the pool: swimming, sliding, jumping, jumping (and more jumping.) We’ve picked blueberries and made shoebox replicas with popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners. We’ve devoured more watermelons than we can count and way too much ice cream to admit to. We’ve watched fireworks and caught fireflies and somehow kept our skin from catching fire with all of our outside time. We’ve ogled a moose and ridden an Iron Dragon and discovered snakes in bushes.

So bring it, August. I’m not done with summer yet. Others are packing up the beach toys and setting up the homework stations, but I am still full-go summer. I have a rocky river to kayak and some rocks to climb and more blueberries to pick and more trips to the pool. I have miles to run and hot fudge to drizzle and a few more late nights up my sleeve.

And when we report for duty at the end of the month, all sun-kissed and light-haired and bruise-legged and sandy, you’ll see that we made the most of your fiery month. And the rest of the summer, too.

The Ride

2010-07-31T07:28:00.000-04:00

She appears with a twinkle, and that pursed little smile she sports when she is trying to get away with something. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Surprisingly, I am. We ditch our shoes and head out to the dock, shifting our bottoms carefully so as to be at the very edge without being IN the water.

The early air is cool and the sky the color of macaroni and cheese. And the sun ripples on the channel waves as boats head out to fish. It is a perfect moment: communing with nature in a quiet hour with my not-so-little girl.

We hold hands and let our toes dance dangerously close to the water. We giggle. We watch geese and gulls and herons and wonder why the owl on the pole next door has not moved since the last time we sat together like this.

“I think he’s pretend, Mommy.”

And I marvel at this girl, so grown up in so many ways. The previous day we had spent at Cedar Point. She proved fearless, and I will never forget her gleeful look as she hung suspended over one hundred feet in the air before plunging sixty miles an hour on the giant arm of the Skyhawk. Or watched her with her cousin bounding from the Corkscrew three times. They even got to stand in line all by themselves. She conquered seven different coasters and countless other thrill rides.

But I laughed that she still wanted to ride the baby antique cars, the ones she had to stuff her long legs into and experience the radial circle go around and around and around. Seems less than thrilling to me. Or the balloon ride in Snoopy Land that takes young riders about three feet into the air in a similar practiced circle.

And that is where we are. Trapped between the pudgy toddler who fearlessly wanted to explore everything and the hazel-eyed long legged beauty with a wicked sense of humor. The girl that now drags her little brother into her lap to read to HIM instead of cuddling close to hear a story.

The girl that steals my breath with her questions and ideas, but still believes in magic and heaven and an owl on a pole who hasn’t moved in days.

And I cling to this morning on the dock tighter than she held to the Gemini. And the sky whitens and we keep giggling and I know that this is the best ride of all.

Cup of Patience

2010-07-16T10:09:00.002-04:00

“She is at it again, this daughter of mine. She plunges like a pencil, writing her summer again and again with scissor kicks and flailing arms”. I wrote these words last summer a few weeks before the old Avon Lake pool closed for demolition and the three long seasons of reconstructive surgery began. After a seemingly endless wait, (think: “Mom, are we there yet?”) said daughter, her two brothers and I attended the opening aquatic center festivities a few weeks ago.

What a spectacular place to call home this summer. Don’t get me wrong. All of us are a little old-fashioned and each of my kids in turn has muttered the phrase “I miss the old pool.” But considering we have been there nearly every single day, we are definitely enjoying ourselves.

You’d have to see it to believe it. I couldn’t begin to describe it in print. But suffice it to say that there are slides for children of all ages, lots of places to swim and jump, and water water everywhere!

What I don’t understand are all the complaints I hear, and the ones City Hall is receiving. People are angry about the residency requirements and how many guests can be brought in. They think the lifeguards have been rude and the rules are unfair. But I’m not sure how you could possibly open a 4.2 million dollar swimming center and have everything run perfectly on day one. (Did I mention that the pool was UNDER budget and ON time? When does that ever happen?)

My family and I have had a pass for the last 3 summers and have spent a LOT of time at the pool. We were here last year on the Saturdays with only a few families. And the cloudy days. And the frigid days. And the blistering hot days where you can’t even move because there are so many people.

Considering the fact that my children and I have been to the pool so often, I have seen a plethora of lifeguards, staff members, and supervisors, as well as a variety of crowd conditions. Sure, there are some kinks to work out. But every lifeguard and staffer we have dealt with has been kind and professional. And all the employees are working hard to hammer out the rules, help the patrons follow the rules, and make the pool safe and enjoyable for everyone. With the sheer volume of customers and the overwhelming facility, I for one would applaud their efforts.

And let us not forget that most of the people working there are sixteen. They did not make the rules and they are just doing their best to do their jobs. A little kindness goes a long way, and should go both ways. No adult needs to lose their temper with a high school kid if they can’t get in the pool because they are not a resident (didn’t the residents foot the bill after all?) or because their kid is too short to ride the slides. The guards have worked hard through a lot of training and for the most part are very diligent.

There are some stand-outs of course. My kids will never forget the way Sam and Becky and Mike have taught them how to swim over the past few summers, and I love how the lifeguards get excited when their former students master a new skill. And Bridget and Mike’s friendly smiles and waves at the front desk make my kids grin from ear to ear each time we come in. There are Meghan and Erin who whisk my three year old from underwater at the end of the orange slide, and Greg the supervisor, who offers to swim with my son to make him less afraid during his swim test. I appreciate that sense of community, especially when my childrens’ lives are at stake.

The pool is meant for relaxing. And although it can be overwhelming at times, I do think it is a great asset for the city and a spectacular way to spend a summer day. Admission is cheap, the snack bar is economical, and the staff and lifeguards are friendly and well-trained. Let’s cut them some slack as they work out the kinks of the new digs. They are working hard to protect our children and provide some good clean fun.

Together for Eternity

2010-07-15T22:33:00.002-04:00

This was a punch in the gut that knocked the wind right out of me. I was standing in front of my father’s grave about a week after the ninth anniversary of his death. (Things get so busy in the summer, and really he would want his grandkids at the pool rather than hanging out at a cemetery.)

This particular cemetery is beautiful though, filled with saplings and a pond where geese alight and my little boys try to frolic and swim. (They do not require concrete and slides, only water.) There is a fantastic bridge and a path for the kids to walk. I am glad that they like to come here.

We have many people to visit: my brother-in-law and an aunt and uncle on my husband’s side. All buried within ten yards of my own father. But that’s a story for a different day.

This day we stood near my dad’s grave to say a special prayer. And I saw that he had new neighbors. Not sure how else to say that. Always seems odd to me that you spend eternity laying next to total strangers.

But when I saw the names on the grave next door, I lost my breath. Erin and Andrew, buried together in one grave immediately next to my dad. It came to me instantly, the most tragic of stories from several months ago.

She was a high school student pulling out of her driveway one morning on her way to school, the most mundane of tasks really, when she was broadsided by a car speeding down the road. She died instantly and her little brother survived only one night. Two lives snuffed out in an instant, and now their legacy was there at my feet.

Couldn’t help but burst into tears right there. My kids have seen me cry here before. But this time it was not for my dad and my kids and all we had lost. I didn’t have the heart to tell them how young grandpa’s new neighbors were.

I just continued to stare at the names on the tiny crosses, graves too new for names etched in stone. I couldn’t wrap my brain around this. Not only the grievous unfairness of the dead children, but the fact that they were buried here, at least an hour from where they lived, and of all places, directly next to my dad.

And as I stand here, I grieve for their mother, too. I wonder if she comes to sob for her children as I come to lament my father. And I wonder if she imagines who is lying beside her children, so quiet in the earth like that which he gardened. And he with no grandchildren and they without their mother. Maybe, just maybe, there is symmetry of comfort in the great beyond.

My kids have long-since run to chase after butterflies. And I dry my tears. And I hope she knows what a great, gentle man lies next to her precious children for eternity. And if somehow that could help.

Let Freedom Ring

2010-07-04T22:48:00.003-04:00

The significance of the day is not lost on me: a true independence day. I needed no sparklers, bottle rockets, or star-spangled singing this year. What I did need were my carefully tied shoes and a starter’s pistol. And some endurance and ability that I didn’t know I had.

It was a stormy night not so long ago when I ran for the first time. I will not forget those faltering, panicked steps, as I tasted the edge of running and I struggled to outrun the storm.

Today was a different story. The air was still. And hot. And filled with promise. I knew I could cover the distance. But I wasn’t sure how to do it in a pack, among hundreds of other runners working for a worthy cause. And I wasn’t sure how to quiet the doubting monsters in my head, the voices that said I was an imposter and not a real runner.

The road was long, pavement pounding in the early heat. I struggled to catch my breath. Never did hold on to it. Other runners stopped, or straddled neighborhood sprinklers as they jogged. And the merciless sun beat a fierce cadence as I ran.

But I did it. I ran, so I am a runner. It is simple as that. And I was happy to prove that this morning. Mostly to myself.

It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t pretty but I am sure it is faster than I have ever gone. And as of two months ago, it is something I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined. Not bad for a Sunday morning’s work.

Self-determination, freedom, liberty. I won them all today. And these are a lot more important and a lot longer-lasting than a show of fireworks and a snow cone.

Beyond my Back Yard

2010-06-26T21:51:00.000-04:00

This is a strange kind of grief. Although it’s been nine years, I didn’t know him all that well. He was the man on the other side of the Wrigley field style fence in my back yard. The fence is covered with the most hardy ivy. I’ve spent nine hot summers trying to kill it; it claws through my garden and sneaks into my lawn. But it will not yield. Even as I waged my death blows to the creeping foe, part of me always worried that he wanted it on his side of the fence; and now I’m kind of glad the ivy never died.

This week, though, my neighbor did. Seventy doesn’t seem that old to me anymore, and I’m not even sure what happened, but I heard through the grapevine this week that he had died.

It was a strange relationship we shared. The fence is high and sturdy and with the ivy practically impenetrable. I never did see him much. Unless I was in my kitchen window and he was headed, shirtless, to the hot tub on his patio. I will always remember his wrinkled, sagging skin and tousled hair. I never saw his legs.

There was the summer of the Frisbee. My daughter was four then, and took every delight in chucking the darn thing over the fence whenever I turned my back to pull a weed or start the mower. Then we’d find it, tossed gently back on our side, the next time we went outside.

We didn’t talk much either. One summer he saw me digging up the grass to create a garden, quite near his sunny corner of my yard. He must have heard me sweating and cursing so close to the fence. He offered me his rototiller to make the job easier. I’d say that’s the only conversation we ever had.

Oh, I heard him plenty. He and his wife used to fight up a storm. One or both of them was hard of hearing, because they’d come at each other at megaphone volume and their insults would fly over the fence like a Cubbies home run. Fast. And hard.

The pair loved to be outside, and apparently didn’t work. They’d bring their television out to the back yard and watch re-runs of Homicide at top volume in the afternoons. They’d sip their cocktails under the faded umbrella and Wheel of Fortune would spin them through the evenings.

This week the noise from the other side of the fence has been markedly different. Laughter. And more laughter. Stories about setting fires and walking dogs. Do you want beer or wine? the newcomers hear. I hear his widow’s voice, somehow less sharp these days. Reminiscing with her many children and the siblings of her husband. It has been a weeklong wake. I do think they’re Irish. And the drinks and the stories continue to flow tonight.

But the television’s off. The hot tub is silent. And I am left here on my side of the fence with my grief. I hate to think that I could have been more for him, that I could have had a more active role in his life. But I’ve always felt that good fences make good neighbors. And I didn’t want to get too involved.

Now I realize I’ll kind of miss him, that presence in my back yard just beyond the fence. And as of now, I think I will just let the ivy grow as it will this summer.

Texas Angel

2010-06-24T22:16:00.004-04:00

James Hunter. Richard Lowrie. Sam Baker. These men perform a morbid ballet of sorts in my head tonight. This trifecta has come inexplicably together to teach me a few things about life.

I first met James when I was a teacher at Firelands High School. He and I walked the same dingy halls, cursing the Tostado Pizza Day every Wednesday in the cafeteria and the grotesque animal odors coming from the Ag Science room. Although I never had him in class, I knew of his love for his family military tradition and his inquisitive nature. But fate intervened with his plans for a lifelong military career when he was killed this week in Afghanistan on his third tour of duty, serving as his unit’s photojournalist.

Last night I went out to forget. It seems I’ve waited a lifetime to meet one of Texas’ gems, singer-songwriter Sam Baker. Okay, it’s only been a year. But when his haunting, seasoned voice began, I knew that his music had the power to do more than just entertain.

“There’s a soldier. He’s in the way of harm. A girl holds a baby in a blanket in her arms. Boys laugh. Boys play.” Figures he would play “Baseball” first. It was difficult to listen to these words on the heels of the loss of yet another soldier. But somehow comforting as well. “Another Saturday comes and goes.” And life continues to blow.

The man and his music have power all right. I’m not sure if it’s the Texas boots and swagger or the piercing blue eyes or the way he closes his eyes to let the songs envelop him, but to watch Sam Baker play is to watch a man who is breathing life from every moment. And well he should. He almost didn’t make it himself. Caught on a train many years ago that was blown-up by terrorists, he watched those nearby him die and sustained many life-threatening injuries. The surgeries healed his body and I’m pretty sure the music healed his soul.

I know it was working on me last night.

Earlier in the day I had heard another story that was disturbing me. Richard Lowrie, an eighty-six year old man and husband for three and a half decades, was killed in a bizarre accident at a McDonald’s drive-thru. News accounts say he had gone to get his wife a cup of decaf coffee, dropped his glasses out of the window, and crushed himself when he reached out the door to retrieve them and accidentally hit the accelerator. A lifetime of love was shattered in an instant.

Sam had a song for that too. “Waves” tells the story of a man who has lost his wife of fifty years and goes to the ocean to write her name in the sand. The waves wash it away. “So many years, so many hardships. So many laughs, so many tears. So many things to remember. ‘Cause they had 50 years.” The first time you hear this song takes your breath away. And every subsequent time makes you want to breathe forever. And find true love.

Another song starts with a woman with a limp. “Don’t worry. It all turns out okay,” Sam chides the audience. And that is what strikes me about the music this night. He’s got the stories of the huddled masses. The good, the bad, and the ugly. He’s experienced it himself, and he’s a confessor who hears peoples’ stories at gigs throughout the country. These stories are his songs. And they aren’t always pretty. But they are always powerful.

James, Richard, Sam: these three men meld in my head. Like Dicken’s classic, they are my specters come to teach the lessons I need for the journey. And it reminds me of the song “Angels” that I didn’t get to hear Sam sing, but that speaks to his music and my own melancholy: “They ease all suffering. They heal all pain. Her angels come like healing rain. Love and angels conquer all.”

And the trick is to recognize the angels by their cowboy boots.

Two by Two

2010-05-25T08:22:00.003-04:00

They are at it again, these mallards. Orange webbed feet sludging through a giant mud puddle of tall grasses. They join me every morning and I laugh because the pristine lake is a quarter mile away. I’d take the wide-open lake over a buggy, dirty puddle myself. But yes, I act like this too sometimes, can’t see the lake for the puddle. I get you, ducks.

It is nature day on the trail this morning. Everyone is moving two by two, like the famous ark scene, but without the rain. Or the imposing old man. As far as humans, I have the trail to myself: the cheese runs alone.

Two deer cross my path, eyeing me suspiciously. Would there be any other way, for the most majestic of creatures to see this humanoid huffing and puffing her way down the path? The deer must have really been wondering. They don’t move out of the way as I loudly approach. For a minute I am frightened: Bambi Attacks (Very Slow) Jogger. News at 11. But we make our peace as I run by, a place on the path for each.

There are two robins, two garden variety black birds, two cardinals, one the most astonishing of reds. They cavort and bounce in the morning’s warmth.

The sun rises through the trees and I can see the reddened sky over the lake. A glorious way to start the morning. My dad echoes in my head from miles away: “It's all part of nature, you see.”

Yep, he got it, set me on this path to look with a young girl’s wonder even when my knees are telling me I am not so youthful anymore.

I pass the deer again. They let me get closer this time. My own little audience watching me from atop the little hill where they stand. I am sure they are cheering on the inside.

Two birds overhead reflect the mirrored light of the new sun’s rays, all white and celestial on their undersides like that dove from the ark.

Once again I pass the puddle. The ducks join me on the path as I pass. And yes, I can run slightly faster than they can waddle. Another one of my dad’s favorite sayings comes to mind: “You with the webbed feet, get out of the pool.”

And then it hits me. The cheese really isn’t running alone after all.

Tip of the Iceberg

2010-05-22T19:06:00.001-04:00

The look on her face was acute revulsion mixed with awe and horror. It was as though I was the train wreck and she could not look away. I couldn’t have surprised her more if I had pulled out an uzi and started shooting up the classroom. Sarah and I had to meet later that day for a writing competition. I suggested that she text me when she was close to the site. Then I watched her face flower into disbelief. She turned bright red and took a few steps back. She just could not grasp that her eighth grade teacher could text, much less suggest it as a means of communication. We had a good laugh about it later after the tournament, but I could tell that it was still too much for her to fathom.

I wonder what she and her classmates would do if they knew more. I suppose they don’t spend much time thinking about what their writing teacher does when she is not standing in front of them, or where she may have spent her time before the days of her teaching career began. They probably think I dropped bodily from the atmosphere into their classroom, and at the end of each school day I just box myself up until the next lesson. I bet I could really rock their worlds with a few of my juicy secrets. Or even the mundane ones.

Would they believe, for instance, that my dad was a repo man and I used to help him make investigative calls? He even found a car with a dead body in it once. Could they imagine me at the top of the Eiffel Tower with an American tourist named John, or running hand in hand with said tourist from the train station to the Louvre just before closing time? Could they picture me singing in a Dublin pub, or hitchhiking in the back of a white van, or herding cows that lived on my cousin’s farm in Ireland? They would probably also have trouble grasping that one night I drove to Niagra Falls and back with some friends, solely to chew grape Bazooka bubble gum in sight of the torrential horseshoe-shaped waters.

As I age, I suppose my dreams seem much more humdrum than the adventures of my youth. But if a kid thinks that me texting is outlandish, perhaps she would be surprised by other simple things as well. Like the fact that I have taken up jogging. Can’t really claim to call it running. Not yet anyway. But what if they could see me sweating on that path through the woods near my home? THEY might be the ones in need of resuscitation. What if they caught a glimpse of me dancing in the rain with my daughter, or building sand fortresses with my sons? Or if they could see me struggling to write, to express myself, to publish, to go after my dreams? We probably have more in common than they realize when I put a blank paper in front of them and watch them clamor for a muse.

There are other secrets. Places in my heart that I am sure would shock even me. And dreams that are just coming to light. It’s been a wild year so far and a time of great insight and change in my life. And face it. If I am honest, it really hasn’t been all that long that I have known how to text. So perhaps Sarah is not that far off in her shock. But really, if she and her classmates only knew what was lying underneath the still waters of the woman who stands in front of them, I do think they would be amazed.

And as I struggle to unearth the dreams myself, to forge the new paths that keep me moving forward with vision and strength, I am pretty amazed myself!

Weighed Down

2010-05-16T21:17:00.000-04:00

The bag is still sitting in the corner. Its been there for weeks, stuffed between my dressers and the basket of unmatched socks in my bedroom. Apparently I am waiting for it to sprout legs and walk away by itself, but clearly that is not happening.

I have been working on this project for the past five months. The project of making a tinier, healthier me. I have cut calories, eaten more than my share of crisp cauliflower, and avoided the endless stream of goldfish crackers in my house. Then there are the workouts. I swear Jillian Michaels is trying to kill me. She and her 30 Day Shred have been tormenting me for well over thirty days now. I have done boot camps, pilates, and even a very difficult and suspicious routine dubbed Yoga Meltdown. Against my better judgment, I have even starting running.

But still the weight remains. Oh, I don’t mean the physical pounds on my body. Those are doing a pretty good job with their grand exit. Twenty-nine pounds and four ounces removed on this journey so far. Boy do I love the tenths place on that scale! And the clothing sizes, well, they have been dropping too. Down from size twelve to size eight, and even sometimes a six when the wind is blowing from the northwest and all the stars are aligned just so!

So what is the problem? Why is this bag of giant clothes still sitting in my bedroom? Why is it so difficult for me to give these clothes away, the old giant teacher sweaters and the pants that won’t stay up? I’ve basically halved myself, at least according to the size of my khaki pants. But the bag of clothes sits and waits for I’m not sure what.

Oh, I understand that I have some sort of block. Any grown woman who has been carrying around 30+ pounds for her entire adult life definitely has something to hide. Or to unearth. I’m just not quite understanding the why of it all. Oh, I get the mathematics. I understand how much my body needs to move and what needs to be consumed in order to lose weight.

But I can’t yet figure what my heart needs to do in order to feel like I deserve it. That I am worthy of breathing deeply and having my body respond. That I am capable of looking good in single digit clothing. That I can look forward to bathing suit season without cringing. That I can run and not collapse. That I can show off defined muscles.

It isn’t the money I spent on the clothes. Its not that I am attached to certain styles or colors. It is something to do with the nakedness, my need for covering. My fat did it for some many years. And these bulky sweaters are all I have left to hide behind.

But I think I’ve had enough. I really do. Spring is a good time for shedding: the detritus of winter, cocoons, fears. I want the fat to stay gone, and the oversized pants to find a new happy home. As for me and my new rock hard abs, you can find the likes of us racing down the beach and soaking in the sun soon enough. Without any old-fangled ideas or clothing weighing us down.

The Power

2010-05-07T22:30:00.001-04:00

The air is heavy. Thick with humidity. And I don’t have a choice. I need to get out. It is a sharp longing, like my desire for oxygen or sleep. The storm is coming. Harsh rumblings pound closer and the sky glows an eerie shade of pink. I know I’ve got to move.

And it happens. Just like that. I am flying down the street, feet not quite sure what to do with newly found speed. I only run when being chased. It is a policy I’ve kept with well. But tonight is different. I need to get out fast.

The sidewalk meets my shoes haltingly, and my breath heats. I cannot believe this is me. Wouldn’t believe it at all if not for the faltering steps at the end of my own legs and the cymbals of my breath crashing in my ears.

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.

I reach my driveway just as giant raindrops start to fall. The wind and lightning torment each other to frenzy as I slam through my front door. And my chest heaves as I stare back into the night. Hail the size of kumquats is pelting soggy grass and the sky is lit up like the middle of the day.

The power of the storm is fierce. But there is other power here, too. And tonight I can finally see it as the lightning rages through the darkened sky.

Sands of Time

2010-05-03T20:38:00.001-04:00

The night is perfect, if not a little too windy. One of those spring evenings on the lakeshore where you feel like you have finally cheated the long, harsh winter. I watch my son and daughter play in the sand at Lake Erie’s edge. He looks like Huck Finn, I think, as he saddles up to the world’s largest piece of driftwood. His giant flat feet slap the sand as he counts with his sister: “1, 2, 3, lift!” They are not quite strong enough to heave the driftwood back to sea. He insists on calling it the sea, this sandy-headed adventurer with the impish grin. It always makes me giggle.

The lake is crystal clear underneath the breakers that kiss the shore tonight. The algae has not yet had time to grow and the winter’s freeze has kept the water clean and pure so far. The air is sweltering and so odd for April. My kids run in and out of the water, being careful to avoid the rocks at the bottom. I dip my toes in and have to jump back immediately. The water is too cold for my adult sensibilities. But I watch them “accidentally on purpose” fall into the water in their clothes. Now they have no choice but to frolic and swim. It has been a very long time since I was the little girl, playing inside the break-wall and chasing waves with my father. We called this place Rocky Bottoms, a name we coined that still holds true now some thirty years later. Both the name and the place, it seemed, were like our own little secret.

I am grateful to see so many people enjoying the wonders of nature this night. It seems like so many nights I have been here alone. But tonight is different. There is a family of seven on the break-wall nearby. They spell out O-H-I-O for a picture, minus the baby who is busy eating sand. There is an older couple up top watching the action from a bench. The snack cooler between them gets some use before they shuffle back to their car. A burly young man uses the boat launch for his twenty-footer and a couple of jet skies throw their wake nearby. There are other families with sand buckets and young kids and older people with dogs and bikes. A few teen-agers giddy with the freedom of warm weather round out the scene. We are all reveling in nature’s best party, a sunset overlooking the lake on a perfect evening like tonight.

I can’t imagine a world where north wasn’t Lake Erie and I couldn’t hear the many moods of the water from my front yard a half mile away. I don’t know that I could subscribe to a life without Lake Effect Snow and the cooling summer breezes that keep temperatures sane in the deep heat. And I sure don’t think a childhood is complete without skipping rocks and getting sand in your shoes. And your hair.
And your heart.

Precious Moments

2010-04-12T16:34:00.000-04:00

The calendar dictates that my spring vacation is over, but there are some moments that I would like to hang on to. It’s like the Climax song that I was infatuated with in high school. (And isn’t high school the perfect place for infatuations?) “Precious and few are the moments we two can share. And if I can’t find my way back home, it just wouldn’t be fair, cuz precious and few are the moments we two can share.” The academic world in which I live is ruled by the bell schedule and the clock. I start and end my day with a sharp jangling, and I constantly have my eye on the clock to get it all in, make everything fit, and get the charges out the door on time. And God forbid I am in the middle of a sentence, no matter how profound, when the lunch bell rings. No one will hear the end of it.

My home has a much different feel. Vacations are not governed by time. We wake and sleep in a more natural rhythm (although, let’s face it: two year old and natural rhythm are usually mutually excusive.) We sometimes start with a loose plan, but are willing to jump off the beaten path and go with the flow. I like it that way. And so while others traveled to far-off beaches and enjoyed sun and sand over vacation, my home and I enjoyed some stellar moments. I love these glimpses when time stands still and I can focus on being rather than doing.

So here is a glimpse of moments, in no particular order, that I would like to tuck away in my memory:

The look on Marty’s face, half-hidden by sun and helmet, as he streaked down the sidewalk on his bike. Faster than I thought possible, his legs pumped furiously and his giggles kept the rhythm of the beautiful moment!

The fit of giggles I encountered with some new friends and some old ladies. We happened upon a Ladies’ Guild meeting while waiting for a speaker, and I saw a glimpse of the future I am sure (hoping) I will never find. God help me if I dye my eyebrows brown and wear sandals and hose together, or feel the need to talk about the social excitement of wakes.

The scenes in my back yard watching my kids play with the neighbors. We have been through foods, fires and tornados this week: it was big for natural disasters. Even as I type this, there is a very serious happening with swords and spy gear on my front lawn.

The sweat dripping from my face and the strength in my body that I never knew I had. This spring is a time for re-birth, a time for me to re-construct my body and mind and take control. I like this feeling of power an awful lot.

The lilt of my youngest as he constantly croons: “Mommy, I want to tell you sumpthing.” The boy is a myriad of runny nose and sparkling eyes and freeform ideas. And let’s not forget the pteradactyl shrieks whenever someone does him wrong. And even when they don’t.

The feeling of semi-consciousness as I waken from a nap in my back yard. The sun was out, the warmest of breezes blowing, and the book I had been reading was laying cock-eyed across my chest. Perfection.

The ham. Oh that amazing ham times two houses and the potato salad and the twice baked potatoes and the chocolate-covered pretzels and the…..Well, you get the picture. Easter was not a good day for re-tooling my body, but perhaps my soul took a turn instead?

The amazement I feel when I watch my daughter read and how she opens four books and reads the first chapter in each with her little eyebrows knit in concentration. And then she moves on to chapter two and so on until my head is dizzy. Can’t imagine that I had a hand in her creation. Beautiful!

The knowledge that the best things really are what money can’t buy. The way my kids feel in my lap when we read “Maltilda” before bed. The pitter patter I hear at bedtime because they just want one more hug. The grins of accomplishment that come from jungle gyms crossed or art created.

Precious and few. It’s really true.

Old

2010-04-08T19:26:00.002-04:00

When I am old I will wear bold prints,
Or perhaps a red pleather coat with golden shoes.
I might adorn a simple black dress with macramé and beads of many colors.
And dye my eyebrows the deepest muddy brown.

When I am old I will speak loudly and out of turn.
I will fall asleep upright in chairs and ramble on with no one listening.
I will adorn my bony fingers with giant shards of costume glass
And coif my blue-tinged hair with careful hand.

When I am old I will shuffle my feet
And get up slowly from my chair. I will dress to the hilt and
Always wear colored hose with sandals. I will murmur often.

When I am old I will always get my money’s worth and dine
Exuberantly at the table of snacks. I will even take some home in my purse.
I will be nosy and always have an anecdote about a grandkid,
And dig relentlessly for connections.

When I am old I will think that a short trip across town is as amazing
As man walking on the moon. But maybe on both counts I’ll be right.
I will eat the cake AND the brownies with icing.
I will know that the elevators won’t arrive until long after I am gone.
And I will be finally comfortable enough to simply be.

Too Much

2010-03-28T21:08:00.001-04:00

It’s the old man at the deli counter that gets me. I’m waiting in line today, the kids behind me clamoring for donuts and cheese slices, and I happen to glance in his direction. He has been waiting quietly, head down, feet shuffling. My eyes take it all in with a glance, and I can’t help but stare at the brown dress shoes. Worn with work-out pants that zip at the ankles, it makes a strange sight. And I wonder who is not there to help him dress.

He is eyeing the containers for the take out foods, and even now I choke up as I recall. He just looks lost, his eyes like my son gets when he loses sight of me in a crowded room.

“May I help you?” the clerk finally comes to take his order.

“I’ll have a small tub of….of Grandma’s Potato Salad.” The words a bit halting, and his eyes still kiss the floor.

“May I help you, ma’am?” another clerk calls impatiently to me, and it is obvious that I had missed the first request.

“Ham, the one on sale. I’ll have a pound please.” But my eyes are drawn back to the man at the end of the deli as he shuffles away with his small tub of potato salad and mini-loaf of Italian.

I choke up as he passes by my mounded cart of groceries.

This has certainly been the month for grief and I to tango. In the past few weeks, two local police officers have died in the line of duty: one collapsed while running, an apparent heart attack victim on a foot chase, and the other was shot in the head several times while responding to a neighborhood dispute in a nearby town. The perpetrator was angry about a discrepancy over his fish pond, clearly a reason for snuffing out a life.

My friend’s dad died last week after a long, heroic battle with cancer. Hospice was there at the end, and the entire family was present to witness their father, business partner, and confidant breathe his last.

In Cleveland, a little girl close to my son’s age was killed by her mother; the little angel spent her last days in a motel bathtub being scalded by the mother whom Social Services had recently let back into her life.

Natural disasters fill the earth. I had barely registered the devastating earthquake in Haiti before I turned my prayers to Chile after Mother Nature detonated her latest there. Snowstorms and floods continue to wreak havoc in ravaged areas.

The world is filled with vats of grief; and surprisingly, I have no choice but to turn away. I just can’t take it all in. I simply don’t have enough emotion for it all. Perhaps it is self-preservation, a stoic wonderment, an unwillingness to rock my own world. I am content with the runny noses that never leave and the crushing snubs at recess. And the hangnails. This week I even had a bleeder.

I cannot feel everything; I am not a caustic woman, (unless you ask my students of whom I demand much) but the typical grief-worthy events do not grab me. It is only those moments, uncalculated and unexpected, that find me catching my breath and dabbing my eyes.

And so it is with the man at the deli. I have no idea of his circumstances; there is no way to tell if he is lonely or at peace. But somewhere between the zippered work-out pants over dress shoes, my heart is just a bit more broken today.

The Circus is in Town

2010-03-18T21:06:00.003-04:00

"Mommy, mommy, mom, mom, mom, mom!!!” The two year old is insistent and incessant.

“What is it honey?”

“Ummmm….I forget.”

Meanwhile, his brother is sitting in the middle of the floor looking forlorn.

“What will happen when I fall through this trapdoor?” he queries.

“What trapdoor?”

“I just know this is a trapdoor and I am about to get sucked in.”

Cut to camera three where sister is doing her homework. She bites her lip and talks out loud as she fills out her paper: plants and animals that live in ponds.

“Water scorpion, muskrat, algae, dragonfly, flatworm, roundworm, leech,” she painstakingly copies.

“Mom, what’s a basscarp?” I stop her for a quick lesson on the beauty of commas. She is not amused.

“Mom, mommy, mom, mom, mommy.” He’s at it again. “I ride stop sign.”

“No honey, you are not allowed to ride your bike to the stop sign when you are two”

“Mom I just know it. I’m going to get sucked in. Will you catch me before I fall into the floor?”

I learned how to juggle in grad school. I have half of a technical theater degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and since I am not currently blessed with enough time to play with power tools and hang light grids, the juggling is all I’ve got left.

And boy does it come in handy with three kids and their various problems on a random Thursday night. I started with balls and haven’t progressed much from there. Unless you count the kids and the myriad questions/problems/wonderments at any given moment. No knives or flares of fire for me though. I’ll leave that to the professionals. And I have to sing that circus song. Always. Or I can’t get the rhythm right. “Da, dadada da dada dad a da.” You know the one I mean.

I laugh when I think back to how much I didn’t know then. How stage managing a show seemed so difficult and all-consuming. Theatre’s got nothing on the “mom, mom, mommy” crowd.

I like this role. Don’t get me wrong. But gone are the days when I could do just one thing at a time. I no sooner get this thought into my frontal lobe when I hear the familiar refrain:

“Mom, Mo-om!!” The dramatic daughter cries when I am busy talking Marty away from his imaginary trap door. “I just got nail polish on my face.”

I look up in time to see the bright green smear covering most of her right cheek.

“Just tell them it is your pond visual aid,” I quip. "Algae."

And her perfectly placed seven year old glare tells me clearly that I have dropped the ball.

Pop Goes the World

2010-03-16T20:47:00.001-04:00

“Mom, blow a bubble! Please! Please!”

It all started so simply, my son dancing around the living room until I did his bidding. But by now the bubbles have me. I can’t get them out of my mind. My son has a huge obsession with gum chewing and is constantly begging me to blow bubbles. He sits patiently on my lap as I chew, waiting for the bubble to expand and for his chance, if quick enough, to pop the gum all over my face.

These bubbles have taken hold, and I can’t stop. First it was soap bubbles. I love blowing bubbles, hearing the giggles of my children as they chase the soapy spheres through the yard. And as I started thinking, I remembered a night about two decades ago when I was blowing soapy bubbles outside my freshman dorm on a Saturday night. And no, I had not been drinking. It sure was fun, though, to see the looks and antics of the people who had been drinking as they chased my bubbles through the street!

My mind flits to Macbeth’s three witches and my ill-remembered “Double, double toil and trouble” as the cauldron bubbles. They were wishing a double dose of bad wishes on the man himself as they stirred their pot. I suppose it is no coincidence that I have this memory as I watch my own three little monsters stirring a pot of mud, snow, wood- chips and goop in the fire pit with their plastic golf clubs and giant sand shovels . They are out enjoying the barest, earliest moments of almost-spring and I laugh as I watch them dig through mounds of snow to find the tiniest scraps of dirt. I am sure from watching these antics that the spring’s first worm farm cannot be far behind.

And speaking of sleeping with the fishes, I can’t lose these pictures I have in my head of floating long-haired women with the last of their carbon dioxide floating as bubbles to the surface. Perhaps I have read one too many mystery stories, or maybe I am the long-haired heroine, swamped and flailing and fighting to the surface. I am accused like the witches in Salem. I always loved those odds. If you lived you were a witch and would be hung. If you died you would be proven innocent. But still you’d be dead. Sometimes that sounds pretty familiar.

Bubbles and more bubbles. The financial crisis of bubble mortgages. And now it turns out that Siberia’s frozen sea-bed is emitting fierce greenhouse gasses and bubbles that are going to advance global warming. Certainly not all child’s play around here.

Life on the bubble. That is me at this moment. Bouncing, bounding, fluttering, flooding, drowning, popping.

Sometimes Gold Can Stay

2010-03-11T18:19:00.001-05:00

Frost knew it. Ponyboy knew it. Today my boys and I know it too. Nature’s first green really is gold. The path through the Metroparks is still covered with slushy snow. The tall trees won’t let the sunlight through to melt it quite yet. But the sun is warm and my boys are so giddy in their sweatshirts. We run. We collect sticks. We marvel at animal waste. There is so much to see in this newly unlocked world.

We follow deer tracks through the slush and see the animals themselves in the distance. It is a perfect moment. One buck has already lost his horns in anticipation of new summer growth. We spy some daffodils popping through the soil. The eldest climbs a fallen log wedged in between two older trees. He goes beyond where I can reach him with the proudest of grins. Nature is growing all around me. His little brother toddles up after him, still clutching my hand. He is no longer a baby. Frost again. They are only so an hour. This fresh day, just this side of spring, sprouts newness from many angles.

And there is a sense of history here too.

“Grandpa used to take me to the woods to gather sticks,” I tell them.

“Like these?” Marty bellows, clutching a whole arsenal in his dirty hands.

“We used to balance on logs and ride them like horses,” I remember. “We even made one our pet and named her Henrietta.”

Marty’s wide eyes show he doesn’t quite believe me. I’m sure he cannot picture his mother as a little girl. Sometimes I can barely remember it myself.

We follow the youngest on his makeshift path through the woods. He is looking for a log that is not quite so high so he can copy his big brother.

“Dis one, mommy. Dis one.” I hold his hand as he carefully crosses, his little eyebrows knit in concentration and his tongue sticking out. He is a marvel, this one. His language is unfurling like the closed buds that will open in a few short weeks. He’s grown a temper. And a sense of humor. His eyes twinkle mischievously as a matter of course. And he beams when he completes the log crossing.

Meanwhile, Marty finds another large fallen tree. He clamors aboard and straddles it with glee. I can see his antics out of the corner of my eye. Hatless cowboy wonder today, prodding and poking his imaginary horse. The horse is decaying; he nudges it with a thin branch as he plays.

“Giddy-up, Henrietta,” I hear him shout through his giggles. Sometimes gold can stay.

A Mother's Pain

2010-03-05T21:41:00.001-05:00

The lone carton of French vanilla coffee creamer in his hand tonight broke my heart. I recognized his face walking sullenly towards me as I rounded the last row of the grocery store.

I’m always in the dairy aisle when I lose my mind. I can navigate the rest of the store, but somewhere between the 50,000 yogurt choices and light vs. fat free sour cream, I wave the white flag. Today was no different. My two-year old son had been remarkably patient, but still, he’s two. A patient two year old is a bit like a serene polar bear. An oxymoron at best. A disastrous tantrum every other time.

Pierce walked quickly, and I knew where he was going before he ever opened his mouth. He is the father of the sickest young person I have ever known. I taught her last year. I loved her smile and the shy way she painted her nails for her demonstration speech, and the way her friends flocked to her at lunchtime. But she is really sick. It started in fourth grade, an autoimmune deficiency disease so rare that the doctors can’t even figure out how to treat her. She is in ninth grade now, and even though the school year is three-quarters over, she has only attended school nine days.

She has spent the last two straight months at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, where doctors struggle to find out why she won’t stop throwing up. She has been on a feeding tube for the last three weeks. And she still can’t stop throwing up.

“Kimberly needs her coffee cream,” he says, after a mumbled hello. And its not the two year old that is crying in the dairy aisle this time. I imagine this mother, sitting powerless night after night, and it is a moment I almost can’t bear. The horror of tubes and sterility and doctor upon doctor is too much: the gourmet creamer the smallest of favors in a sea of anguish.

In a way I have walked this path. As a daughter, I have supported my father through four straight months of hospital convalescence and a series of surgeries, and helped my mother wage her battle on cancer. I know what its like to eat in hospital cafeterias and sit endlessly at bedsides and rush home to take a quick shower before the next shift begins. But as a mother, I don’t know that I could have survived the last six years, and I selfishly pray that I will never have to find out.

Where does she get the strength to breathe and smile and try when her heart is breaking and her arms are powerless? The most precious gift of all, a beautiful daughter, and no way to wrap her tight and keep her safe. This is surely any mother’s worst nightmare.

Embarrassed, I fumble to hide the antibiotic prescription that I just had filled for my daughter and her earache. It broke my heart last night to hear my daughter’s sharp cries of pain. But it was only one brief night. And the antibiotic will quickly deliver relief.

We chat for a moment more, I offer my support, and watch Pierce hurry to check out with his one item in order to join his wife at the hospital. The image of that gourmet creamer will stay with me for a long time. And I’m sure my heart will continue to break as I return to my comfortable home to hug my kids tight.

A Dream Achieved

2010-03-01T20:19:00.000-05:00

What happens to a dream deferred, wrote Langston Hughes for all of the freshmen English students in Ohio to ponder. Does it fester? Does it burn? I remember (vaguely) learning this poem at age fourteen. And I remember years and years of teaching it to youth who never doubted that their dreams would certainly come true.

Good questions, I think. I remember always feeling so bad for the speaker. What if somebody stood in the way of his dreams? What if he never followed his passion or achieved his ultimate desires? But now I have a new question. What if he did?

What happens to a dream achieved? And likewise the dreamer? What does it mean to let loose, to reach for it, to get what you have been hoping for? I think it scares the hell out of me. Then what? What comes next? And after that?

I don’t think I’m alone in my fear. I think that is why the world is trapped on the couch watching Survivor and Seinfeld re-runs. I don’t think it is so much that we are afraid to fail as that we are afraid to succeed. Perhaps people don’t even dream anymore because then we would have something new to avoid. Better to just live vicariously through awkward singers and dancers, and even worse, runway models.

What if? What if my dreams came true? Then where would I be? Then I might have to create a new goal. Take a step (or a 5K jog) outside my comfort zone. Find something new to complain about.

We love our complacency because it is comfortable. And it does not reject us. Sometimes chasing dreams leaves us with mud on our coats and doors slammed in our faces. It makes us doubt who we are. It makes us doubt who are friends are and what our talents are.

I hate to get preachy, but really. Why don’t I just step up and hit one out of the park? Because I am scared. There are too many heavy loads for me. I feel trapped before I even start. But why?

For instance, I’ve carried around twenty or thirty extra pounds for my whole adult life. Do I really love butter that much that I can’t strive to be the best that I can physically? Do Oreos truly speak to my soul?

Or how about my (insert participle here) teaching, writing, parenting, and learning inertia? Would it be so hard to get off the couch and sign up for a class or play checkers with my kids or make a dynamite syllabus? Apparently, the answer is yes.

I end up disagreeing pretty vehemently with Hughes at the end of his piece. Does it explode? Nope. A dream deferred? What happens to that is WORSE than an explosion. A trickling, a drizzling, a fading maybe, but there is not enough passion for an explosion.

Fading is good for sunsets at the end of the day. Trickling is good for bubbling brooks traversing tiny falls. But these are not good enough for me. What happens to a dream achieved? We’ll just have to see about that.

Dear Bluebird

2010-02-25T13:33:00.000-05:00

You’ve visited twice now, nestling your round little body snugly in the young branches of my crab-apple tree. And each time it is as if someone was staring hard through my window, boring his eyes into my body, willing me to look up. I have startled from my reading and typing to find you sitting just so outside the glass. But when I glance your way, you are not even looking at me but are lost somewhere, facing south, and resting on my branch.

You are not supposed to be here. You prefer grasslands, they say, and the state of Vermont. I can offer you neither, but still you come to my window frame. I have never seen you before, only your wild, awful brother the blue jay, who is not even a brother at all. And it is February. Shouldn’t you still be vacationing somewhere, eating tropical grubs with umbrellas lanced into their backs? Here, the drifts of snow in my yard still nearly reach the branches where you huddle, and I can’t imagine that there are many insects for you to enjoy.

“It’s all part of nature, you see.” That’s what my Dad used to say when trying to explain why the birds came back when the snow was still covering the ground or the crocus flowers bloomed long before spring. Bluebird, you know something that I cannot possibly fathom. Suddenly you and your fellow birds sing me awake on these cold winter mornings when I had become so accustomed to the quiet force of the snow.

Now here you are, a harbinger, when my faith has just about given out and my heart has grown as heavy as the icy sludge I shovel. Spring will come. Your presence assures me.

My dad used to call my sister “Birdie”, and claim that the northern cardinals calling “birdie, birdie, birdie” were singing just for her. I’m not sure where that nickname came from but I remember the day my mom found a pile of birdseed behind her door and the tell-tale evidence that my sister had eaten some. Perhaps that is where it all began.

My own children feasted in secret on bouillon one day, mistaking the cubes’ bright golden wrappings for candy. No nicknames for them, just a few giant glasses of water to wash down the sodium deluge. And the youngest still remembers: “Dat candy taste yucky, mommy.”

But I digress. Somewhere between the winters of my childhood and the hidden birdseed and the fresh adventures of my fledglings lies a secret. It is etched in my heart as sure as the natural rhythm of the bluebird that appears on a branch in my yard. There is a connection here.

It is locked somehow in my baby’s simple nods as answers to questions that require a choice. “Seany, do you want ham or turkey?” He nods his head with a twinkle in his eye. His grandfather did the same thing. But how could my young son possibly know that? My dad drove me batty for years answering questions that way, and now it is my son’s turn. It makes me laugh and marvel.

Somehow, bluebird, you understand this too. Your knowledge has been passed down in the muscle memory of many generations, even if you are a little off track this year. Perhaps Vermont this winter is too snowy even for you.

Before you flutter away, I grab my youngest so he can see. “Burdie, mommy.” He lunges as though the window will give way and he will palm a new pet. You turn slightly at my son’s squeal and then stare in the window at us both. I hold him close as he squirms to reach for you and you lift yourself gently off the branch; it’s all part of nature, you see.

Melting Ice

2010-02-02T12:56:00.000-05:00

“Wahoo!!!” they yell as they race to the cul de sac where the snowplow’s giant gift awaits. The snow goes flying as the kids scramble up the hill to release some pent up energy after a long day of school. I kind of wish I could join in.

Watching from the dining room window, I see a King and Queens of the Mountain, clamoring for position on a surprisingly warm January day. Like my sisters and I played so many years ago, pushing each other off giant mounds of wood chips or top soil or snow, whatever my father’s delight for the day.

On today’s mountain, I can see a reflection of those same smiling faces, but I am too far away to hear the yips of delight and the screams of the three youngsters at play. They aren’t really my own children, but they grow in my heart and on this pile of dirty snow. They are like tender shoots of new connections, forged by mashed potatoes and macaroni and the earth’s most giant muddy sand box.

The oldest girl is a quieter version of my pushy daughter, but comes out of her shell with her siblings when she thinks no eyes can see. Her brother frolics like MY son, a few months different in age and not so much in attitude. And the youngest girl, a sprite from the sea who is just a half stroke behind, races up the hill on the heels of her siblings.

All around them, soggy green grass struggles to right itself after the weight of the snow and its melting. The worst kind of dingy, trapped between the beauty of freshly-fallen flakes and the electric green of spring. But the kids don’t mind. They make snow-balls striped with brown and hurl them and each other around the hill.

And as most afternoons of play on mountains of snow end, an injury ceases the game. A trip on the snow pile and a face plant in the muddy ice pushes the eldest into role of mother as she shuttles her youngest sister the few driveways back home.

And I see in her the tenderness of my own daughter in times of need. The stubbornness and bravado of a first grade girl melts like the snow when a sibling cries. And the dull green grass they trample on their way back home echoes the promise of spring. For them and for their mommies. Spring will erase the giant snow mountain and the cold in our hearts, and it will be a springboard as these tender shoots continue to grow.

Happy Birthday Dad

2010-01-31T20:06:00.001-05:00

Today is the seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth. And I mark it tonight, not with cake and balloons and song, but with a quiet moment of thanksgiving. If this were a wedding anniversary, it would be celebrated with diamonds. That is the traditional gift for a well-lived tandem ride of such length.

But I suppose it fits us too, my dad and I. The word diamond is Greek, and best translated to “unbreakable”. And that makes sense in my unbreakable broken heart tonight. Love is stronger than death, and diamonds themselves. It is tested in fire and buried in earth.

And I am thankful through these tears that on a cold, cold night three quarters of a century ago, he shuffled onto this mortal coil. Thankful for the lessons, and the love, and the bushels and bushels of memories in my unbreakable broken heart.

White as Death

2010-01-28T20:53:00.001-05:00

There’s no place colder than a cemetery in January. It is one of his adages that always sticks in my mind. And today I feel its truth. Every part of me is numb. And for grief like this, that is probably a good thing. We are here in this windy tundra because of the voices. They would not leave him alone. And after nearly a half-century of fighting them, the man within the silver coffin finally flew the white flag.

There is a lot of white today. Snow covers the ground and the roads, and a white pall covers the coffin. White tissues are packed together like snowballs in mourner’s fists. It has been nearly a week since a bottle of white pills and a hastily scribbled note ended it all.

There is nothing pure or virginal here or in the choices he made, as all the white might suggest. But the truth is obscured today; this white blanket of snow the canvas, a wretched hole ripped by a backhoe that gouged the frozen earth nearby. I can’t make it whole again, make the piles of frozen dirt fit back together as they should. And I don’t know where to put these feelings; I am but a marginal mourner at this winter sacrifice .

There is something here for me though. Not sure that I can thaw my brain and toes and heart enough to let it in. Spring is a better time for learning, for lessons and life to rain and pour and flow, saturating my stoic soul; no choice but to let it all in as it rises above its banks.

But the deep freeze of winter is harsh beyond its winds. And today I am numb to all that I must know. Like freezing water expands, my clumsy body and limping mind are no match for these giant questions.

But I know something of pain. As we leave the cemetery, I pause the procession to jump out and right my father’s fallen wreath. He has known eight frigid Januarys in this place, and I shake the snow off the Christmas bow and evergreens fading to yellow before placing them on his stone. Nothing lasts. Or so it seems.

Until later when the flames of the fire light my house and the wood crackles in my memory and heats my room and my frozen limbs. And in the fire’s dance I know my father’s love and my children’s kisses and the quiet peace that escaped the man we buried today.

A New View

2010-01-28T19:34:00.002-05:00

“Mom, look at that giant chimney! That’s the biggest chimney I’ve ever seen,” my partner in crime screamed from the back seat. So much for our covert spy mission. The chimney epiphany was quickly followed by an equally boisterous commentary on a landing plane and the Cleveland skyscrapers and one of those dancing floodlights he called a “stick light”.

“POW, POW POW” he bellowed, as we approached Dead Man’s Curve, shooting his giant imaginary gun as the mini-van rumbled over the strips. “Mom, I shot the Martians!” I could only assume the Martians were the flashing lights urging motorists to slow down. I had a lot to learn as a partner in this spying spree.

The parking garage was the perfect structure in which to continue our game. Marty marveled at the automatic arm that lifted as we paid to allow us in. And there were lots of dark corners for bad guys and monsters to hide as we found a spot to park. We slammed out of the car and bounded up the steps hand-in-hand, just the two of us, for our special night.

His demeanor changed when we entered the museum. There was something about the dimmed lights and the men in the blue blazers that immediately snapped him to attention. I let him lead the way and he tip-toed cautiously to what interested him. He led me through the cavernous rooms of the museum and paused in front of many of the paintings. I was surprised that he would have so much patience for the old Renaissance portraits and the winged angels.

He spent an awful long time staring at American painter Gilbert Stuart’s picture of a woman named Elizabeth Beltzhoover Mason. I’m not sure if he was admiring her well-endowed chest or shopping for a new mommy, but it took me a while to prod him away.

Salvador Dali’s “Dream” also held his attention. What five-year old boy wouldn’t like the idea of ants crawling on someone’s face and bulging eyelids? Although the painting is known for its Oedipus undertones, I’m kind of hoping he didn’t notice those.

And he cracked me up when he took one look at Lee Krasner’s “Right Bird Left” and muttered “Looks like a bunch of scribbles to me.” He was also notably unimpressed with Sean Scully’s “Stay”. I can’t say that I blame him. It looked like a whole bunch of black paint thrown on canvas to me too!

Art appreciation still left him plenty of time for his spy games. The escalators were the perfect transportation for a pair of secret agents, and we went up and down between floors a number of times.

“What IS this?” he cried on more than one occasion. And the items that he found were things I would have never noticed in a million years, like the ornate iron grates covering the heating ducts. He spent a good, long time staring into the walls, trying to figure out where the ducts ended up. The men in the blue blazers were getting nervous when he was lying on his stomach in the corner, with his eye to the ornate metals like a microscope.

“Look at me, mommy!” he giggled in a stage whisper, trying to keep a straight face. He had tucked himself into a crevice in the wall and was standing with posed arms as still as a statue. “The bad guys will never find me here.” I guess they call that becoming one with your art.

I loved watching his face as he entered Armor Court, an entire room full of weaponry and armor. He stood stoically and stared open-mouthed for a moment, and then promptly plopped on a bench, whipped out his spy notebook and pen, and drew his own version of the knight on the horse in the middle of the room, part of it in invisible ink.

He put the museum map to good use too. He continuously folded and unfolded it and pointed at vague spots on the paper. Most of his time was spent looking for the escalator symbols and trying to find new exits and entrances to carry out his missions.

From medieval to modern, he liked it all. He was mesmerized by the “moving curtain” picture, and we spent quite a few minutes trying to figure out exactly how it worked. The giant tube of toothpaste on the podium really caught his eye, as well. James Bond would be so lucky to have THIS much modern art with which to clean his teeth!!

And he really liked the pencil-thin canon he tried to mount like a motorcycle. Now that would make a great means of escape when the going got tough. He shuffled quickly away when the tall guard gave him the evil eye.

We left the building like spies on a mission, examining everything from the pile of bricks for museum construction to the leftover piles of snow near the walkway. Our adventure drew to a close and I must say Marty was equally enthralled with Dead Man’s Curve on the way home and the dinosaur sprinkles when we stopped for ice cream. He doesn’t need a museum to be captivated by the world around him. But it sure was nice for me to see the world of the museum through his eyes and to enjoy being a secret agent for an evening.

Just a Speck

2010-01-17T23:15:00.001-05:00

The Natural History Museum is the place to go for a good cry. Or to get knocked down a peg or two if you find yourself boasting too much self-esteem. Today’s visit reminded me vividly of just how small and insignificant I really am. But come to think of it, as long as it’s not a mealtime, my children offer me the exact same service, actually. Of course I am neither small nor insignificant if I am filling their bellies! It’s just the rest of the time when I am doing terrible motherly things like asking them to clean their rooms or to share a coveted toy.

One sign in the exhibit says, “The lunar footprints will last a million years.” And considering that I have left no lunar footprints, and never will, I am more than a little depressed. I can’t even ride in the passenger seat of a Taurus without feeling nauseous, so I am sure that a space shuttle is no place for me. And so my footprints will not last a million years. I can’t even get my moisturizer to last more than a few minutes, so I can see that making a mark with my footprints or my words that might last a bit of time is an astronomical feat.

Speaking of astronomy, I made the mistake of watching a planetarium show today, which ensured me that the sun is the tiniest fragment of the Milky Way Galaxy and the Milky Way Galaxy is only one of many galaxies in the universe. And I personally am barely a blip in a city in a state in a country on a globe that cannot possibly compete with the vastness of space. And who knew that Jupiter was 1,000 times as big as the earth? This joint is huge! So I suppose that means I can stop worrying about the pile of laundry on the basement floor that never seems to get done.

And then there are the dinosaurs! The Cretaceous Period boasts tyrannosaurus rex, and here I am, standing in front of an actual dinosaur that lived 68 million years ago; boy do I feel small! Literally and figuratively. Makes my problems seem a bit insignificant. I’m sure I’m not the first human to worry about making ends meet or fretting about making her way in the world. And I can almost hear the echo of the dinosaur “Hey lady, you think YOU got problems?”

The bones are here of animals long dead and creatures almost forgotten. People, even, and their jaws and skulls tacked up on the wall next to the gorillas and the chimpanzees. Have I gotten much farther than this? Sure I am a bi-ped and can speak clearly and write my language, but do I have anything more to show of my life than these hapless bones on the wall?

It’s the 68 million dollar question really. What separates me from these animals, the stuffed brown bear or the mastodon or Irish Elk? How have I evolved, from the place that I have started? And most importantly I think, what will I leave behind when my flesh dissolves and my spirit flies? What is it that I want to leave?

Night at the Museum

2010-01-17T22:11:00.006-05:00

The giant hall seemed endless. And with the on-going construction at the museum, it truly was. Raised ceilings and extra-wide hallways were necessary for transporting the precious art and artifacts, some thousands of years old. Marty and I walked hand-in-hand and followed the giant circles that marked the garbled way to the exhibitions. Our long- awaited date night was here.

He had prattled non-stop from our home on the west side all the way to the Cleveland Museum of Art. As one of three children in a very busy family, date night with mom was a big deal. And although I couldn’t get him to dress the part and extract himself from his Star Wars Lego sweatsuit, we both knew that tonight was going to be a big deal.

He just sees the world as an artist, I think. And I thought our destination was the perfect place. But we didn’t even get to the museum before he was obsessing about color and shapes. “Mom, look at that giant chimney! That’s the biggest chimney I’ve ever seen,” he screamed from the back seat of the mini-van. That was quickly followed by commentary on a landing plane and the Cleveland skyscrapers and one of those dancing floodlights he called a “stick light”. He liked Dead Man’s Curve the best. A feat of engineering folly, Dead Man’s Curve is preceded by rumble strips and yellow flashing lights and a great deal of fanfare as far as a little boy is concerned. Even the parking garage amused him.

His demeanor changed when we entered the museum. There was something about the dimmed lights and the men in the blue blazers that immediately snapped him to attention. I let him lead the way and focus on what interested him; I sure am glad I did. He was tickled by so many things, roughly in this order of importance: the escalators, the ornate iron grates covering the heating ducts, the automatic door to enter the statuary room, the entire room full of knight armor, the “moving curtain” picture, and the giant tube of toothpaste on the podium in the contemporary area. In the Armor Court, he plopped on a bench, whipped out his own little notebook and pen, and drew his own version of the knight on horse in the middle of the room. He noticed things I would never have seen, like the pencil-thin canons in the hall outside the Armor Court and the peepholes depicting the stages of construction in the walkway. But he kept going back to the escalators; my little artist already bouncing between his need for form versus function.

He led me through the cavernous rooms of the museum and paused at many of the paintings as well. I was surprised that he would have some patience for the old Renaissance portraits and the winged angels with Jesus motifs. He spent an awful long time staring at American painter Gilbert Stuart’s picture of a woman named Elizabeth Beltzhoover Mason. I’m not sure if he was admiring her well-endowed chest or shopping for a new mommy, but it took me a while to prod him away. Salvador Dali’s “Dream” also held his attention. What five-year old boy wouldn’t like the idea of ants crawling on someone’s face and bulging eyelids? Although the painting is known for its Oedipus undertones, I’m kind of hoping he didn’t notice those. And he cracked me up when he took one look at Lee Krasner’s “Right Bird Left” and muttered “Looks like a bunch of scribbles to me.” He was also notably unimpressed with Sean Scully’s “Stay”. I can’t say that I blame him. It looked like a whole bunch of black paint on canvas to me too!

Our night at the museum drew to a close and I must say Marty was equally enthralled with Dead Man’s Curve on the way home and the dinosaur sprinkles when we stopped for ice cream. He doesn’t need a museum to be in touch with the vivid colors and strong shapes of his world. But it sure was nice to see the world of the museum through his eyes.

Sensitive Souls

2010-01-14T14:07:00.002-05:00

My ears are still ringing. And I can still feel the pounding of the drums in my chest. When I close my eyes, I see long fingers pounding the heck out of a beautiful guitar. I didn’t expect to love it, really, this heart-rending display of rock and roll. But I did. Alejandro Escovedo rocked the Beachland Ballroom last night in Cleveland, a feat he’s been pulling off with audiences across the country for as long as I’ve been alive. I’m not sure how he does it night after night in city after city, climbing into a giant white van after bleeding his soul into the crowd. But it sure is fun to watch the magic unfurl on the stage.

He doesn’t look much like the aging rocker I had pictured. He doesn’t even quite look like the Mexican that he is, somehow bearing a more Asian countenance. But none of that matters when he and the Sensitive Men hit the stage. I just love to watch the chemistry, imagine the jokes these guys tell each other on the long empty miles of highway, see the smiles and chords shared in front of the crowd.

They play with all their heart. Sounds trite really, but you can see the passion and feel the earth-shaking dreams in the beat of the drums and the fierce strumming of the guitars. The bass player is the one that spooks me. He looks like a true rock-n-roller, with a giant wingspan and the longest guitar I’ve ever seen. He plays stoically almost, pulsing the background beat for the show without fanfare and with only the occasional hint of a smile.

He is standing, as it turns out, in the exact spot on the stage where just six months ago another amazing musician stood. Amy Farris, an extraordinary violinist and angelic singer, played the Beachland in July with Dave Alvin and his Guilty Women. Three months after she moved me with an amazing show, she was dead.

I can’t get the picture out of my head. The pale dark haired rocker morphs into the red headed violin dynamo before my eyes. And I realize again just how much these traveling musicians have to give up to follow their fantasies. Apparently, earth-shaking dreams are not enough, even to keep you alive. It swirls in my head tonight: the way these musicians give their all to audiences large and small throughout the country. How they do the only thing they know how to do, without apology and without settling for something less. And how the road is so lonely and the night so dark sometimes. The roar of the crowd is something, but I marvel that it could keep you going night after night in city after city.

There is something very special here, though. In the pounding rock and roll. In the banter with the audience. In the living of the dream. Something special enough to get Alejandro to the next night and the next city and the next dream.

Students of Winter

2010-01-12T13:50:00.001-05:00

“When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Silly me, I always thought the Buddhists were talking about ME being the teacher and some poor hapless youngsters playing the role of students. But a lot of snow and a little hill in my front yard turned that all around for me this week. It is my thousand-dollar hill, the mound of dirt leftover from the sewer pipe that cracked in my front yard earlier this fall. Landscapers say I’m not supposed to level it until it survives the winter because it is so apt to sink. So it sat like an ugly serpent this fall until finally the snow fell. Snow covers a multitude of sins, and it has somehow created a gently rolling, pristine mini-hill in our yard. Like a perfectly coiffed golf course in winter view, a far cry and a great improvement from the ugly mound of rocks and clay. It is now fully covered with pitch white snow, as my children call it, which came with a vengeance in the first week of January. We have no choice but to enjoy it.

And this is the place where my children come in. Because I felt I had a LOT of other choices for what to do with a snowy day where the thermometer did not top 17 degrees, it never occurred to me that playing on the mound of snow would be so much fun and so energizing. Reading, sitting by the fire, making soup: these are the things that come to my mind when the temperature falls. Purposely going out and frolicking in the white stuff? Not so much.

But my three little darlings see snow and only ONE thing comes to mind. PLAYTIME! The other day after school, they were clamoring to get outside. High of 17 that day and scarcely a mile from the winds of Lake Erie, I somewhat reluctantly began the process, barking out orders to three different soldiers with varying capabilities of attention. First, go potty of course. How many times have I completed the entire process of snow readiness, only to discover that a little love has to use the bathroom? Now, it is always first on the list. Then, they hurriedly don snowpants, boots, coats, hats and the ever-difficult mittens. I am called on to assist to various degrees, but somebody’s zipper is always stuck, or the thumb-hole of a mitten stubbornly unwilling to work. Finally, I open the front door and they tumble outside like so many flopping fish thrown on a slippery deck.

And then the magic begins. They grab sledding discs and a flimsy red plastic sled they insist on calling a toboggan and you would think they were at the top of K2 with all the excited chatter and the looks of delight on their faces. They spend an hour, at least, playing King of the Mountain and sliding down the two-foot hill. The neighbor kids come join in the fun and there are smiles all around.

I watch mesmerized from the window, wondering all the while how such a little hill can bring so much fun. It hits me then. These memories of childhood when I would play for hours on a pile of woodchips or wear myself out making snow angels in the yard. A trait I am glad they inherited, this delight in little things and the ability to make a mountain out of a mole hill. Literally. I miss it. That carefree feeling of days spent exploring and living in the moment. And I envy their delight.

The next day I know what must be done. We follow the same procedural frenzy to don our winter clothing, and then head to an actual sledding hill near our house. They love it. All three of them. I marvel as they giggle and fly down the hill and watch their little legs trudge their rosy-cheeked bodies back to the top. They find the wildest hill quickly and take turns in the aptly named ice chute. The baby (who is almost three and really not a baby anymore) rides down on his stomach and steals my breath. His is taken by a bout of giggles as he sails down the hill. The fun ends with hot chocolate all around and the promise of more sledding to come.

A few days pass and we start the madness again. Armed with snow pants and our sleds, we decide to hit a bigger hill in the area. Now mom is the one who is scared and the kids are delighted by every bump and wipeout into the snowy turf. We sled, all four of us, until our fingers are numb and our boots filled with snow. We laugh and scream all the way down the hill as we race. I always lose. Each time we reach the bottom, the youngest squeals “Again, again” before he is even out of the sled. We marvel in the twinkle of the usually-hiding sun on the snow, and my daughter spots an owl high in a tree. It is a perfect day.

Later we melt marshmallows in warm chocolaty milk and tell the tale of our sledding adventure over lunch that day. And it strikes me how thankful I am for the things my children teach me. I would have missed this fun, the exhilarating fear of flying down a hill, if it weren’t for them. Winter is good for more than just hibernating, I see. And we have the snow burn and sore bottoms to prove it after a day on the hills. And we have the giggles and memories to warm us on the coldest of days to come.

Some Say in Ice

2010-01-05T13:33:00.002-05:00

Icy cold fingers grab my neck,
Like my son riding piggy-back and choking my breath.
Each winter the cold comes and stays.
And each winter I forget.
Too close to Erie’s shore: an ice-breathing dragon always ready for battle.
Most days my car door freezes shut and I must curse it open,
throw hot water at the locks, a barely-armed attempt against winter’s wrath.

And today the cold seeps in and will not leave.
No matter tea and blanket and slippers and heat turned up beyond what I can afford.
The chill won’t leave my too-white fingers where circulation slows
And my plodding blood crawls slowly through my veins.

It’s the knife I think of.
Steel scalpel sharp and ice against her skin.
And I cannot shake the red of her dreams on the table
And the way my own blood turns to ice.

We are both pierced today, though glistening blade and
Shuttered heart are not the same.
The cold will deal with both at once,
And the snow will cover that which we will not see.

How long the forgetting will be with this,
How long the battle to slay such foe?
But only that spring and thaw must follow.
And someday Erie’s wind will breathe warmth again.

But it’s the knife I think of on that steel table.
Curses and hot water no match for this,
Carving with the frost of an ice sculptor and
The delicacy of blood’s most tiny vein.
And only now the cold.

Keeping Christmas

2010-01-02T22:26:00.001-05:00

The tree is on its way out. The needles are stuck in the carpet and stab me when I walk barefoot across the room. It hasn’t taken any water for about a week. Just one more job Cinderella forgot to do. Can’t decide between the tradition of leaving it up until Little Christmas or taking the whole bloody thing down tomorrow because Monday is garbage day. And back to school day. The taking down part always seems so much more difficult than the putting up. The lights never wrap themselves neatly and the Misfit toys try to hide where the kids have strewn them throughout the house. The bubble wrap for the precious ornaments has all been popped by curious little hands and is useless for its intended use. The sheep and the cow from the crèche have joined the Transformers in the basement for some raucous games of Save the World. The little shepherd boy never even made it that far; he is lying on the stairs near the door to the garage. And the children worry that baby Jesus will be lonely and cold if we pack him away in the box in the attic. Can’t blame them really. That attic is no place for babies.

Another Christmas is in the books though, and it really is time to wrap it up. We had the magic this year. The perfect ages for leaving cookies for Santa and being good because the elves were watching. That is the part I don’t want to let go. This sense of wonder and my children’s belief in things beyond themselves. My daughter drags the light-up deer through the back yard to the Forest Room, a makeshift hospital where she is sure she can turn “Glory” into a real deer. Her brother calls him Max and uses the deer’s string of lights as an Indiana Jones whip to keep his sister away. I lose track each day of the times I hear him say “Mommy, I’ll be the (fill in animal or creature name here) and you be the mom.” I love my little children perched solidly between reality and make-believe, holding tight to the magic side of course. We believe in the Tooth Fairy and pirates and freckles that come from angel kisses. We acknowledge the existence of red-nosed reindeer and heaven and a weather-reporting groundhog. We love trains that talk and monkeys that are curious and bunnies that leave baskets of goodies, too.

But I know the truth as I sweep these pine needles from my carpet. My children’s belief in these things is as fleeting as these evergreen needles. Although we might wish the enchantment to last forever, just like the fun of Christmas, I know that it won’t. So I cling to it, as stubbornly as the needles dig into my floor. And I vow to be the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny and Batgirl for as long as they’ll let me. A little fairy dust never hurts, and a little magic can go a long way.

Time Flows

2010-01-01T22:30:00.004-05:00

“It's just a long flowing river of time. As I've gotten older it's started to flow faster, like the Niagara River when you get close to the falls. It's hard to stick a knife in there and carve out a slice.”

A friend of mine wrote the words above. And it’s the time of year to think about time and what to do with the twenty-four hours I am given each day. I like this idea. That the river flows despite what I do. Takes some of the pressure off and helps me relax a bit as others are bustling with their resolutions. The natural order of things is to continue, to keep going when the going gets tough. The river washes the silt to the bottom and leaves the top for canoeing and fish-catching and sticks tossed down-river by little boys. I love the idea of where the water has been and what the current has picked up. What is worthy enough of keeping and what is thrown back up on the bank. It’s a good question for me too. Time cleanses me. A lot of my mistakes and mis-steps are drowned in the river. Good thing. There are lots of things for me to throw back up on the bank, too.

I know the sense of urgency as time speeds up. As a teacher, there is a rigid yearly schedule that I must keep. But it seems that each year the time between the first day of school and the last day of school condenses magically, like the way an entire meal of space food can fit into a tiny pouch. Not sure how to reconstitute the minutes of my life as easily as the astronauts can bring their space pot roast back to wholeness, though. My daughter is seven. Seems to me she was just born a few months ago and I am still fighting lack of sleep and lack of baby knowledge. My dad has been gone over eight years. But when I walk in my mother’s house and turn the corner through the kitchen, I still expect to see him sitting in his blue lazy-boy recliner. And then there is me. I can’t ever seem to get a handle on the fact that I am the grown-up now, the one paying the bills and stoking the fire and planning the trips. I swear I was just in the back of the Malibu station wagon throwing up on the way to…well, anywhere! And now I am taking my mini-van in for new windshield wipers and power steering. Where has all that time gone? And has the river worked it’s magic? Has the current forced the silt to the bottom and left the goodness floating on the waves, like the way the best of the cream rises to the top? Good question for a new year. What parts of me need to be re-captured and re-worked, and what needs to be thrown up on the banks to rot with the driftwood?

But sometimes it seems like my river is more of a lazy river. Yes, for the obvious reasons. But also because the water flows in a circle and the hapless folks on the inner-tubes end up right back where they started. It’s like that with me and my déjà vu when I battle the same questions about my weight and my energy and the ways I spend my time. Didn’t I already fight this battle? Why did I lose twenty pounds and then gain it all back? Didn’t I just decide to wake up early and start each day out serenely? Then why do I hit snooze eight times and catapult stupidly into my day? I really don’t mind the river, the passage of time so much, as the circular repeating. The same old mistakes over and over. With the same old results.

My friend says it’s hard to carve out a slice of time. I guess that is true of a river. You can’t really stop the flow and you can’t avoid the falls and the rapids. And I do find it difficult to focus on moments and minutiae and the present. So many old wounds and future fears get in the way. But I think that is my wish for this new year, and new decade of my life. I want to live in the present. To breathe. To feel each jostle of the water and each steadying of the canoe. To throw the sticks in the river with my son and stick around to watch them float downstream to where our eyes can no longer even make them out. It is difficult but not impossible to pay attention to the joys and the searing disappointments and the moments of hilarity as they occur. It is difficult to live in each moment and graciously receive it for better or for worse. I am not as strong as a river, nor as unyielding, it turns out. But I will choose each day to breathe in all of the moments and write them on my heart.

One Wordless Hug

2009-12-15T21:06:00.000-05:00

` Every Christmas season it’s the same. I drag my thirty or so eighth graders down to a public grade school in Cleveland to spread some holiday cheer. It’s the second poorest city in the nation; we’ve got our work cut out for us. We leave our land of suburbia and mini-vans where the biggest problem most of my students face is what color I-pod to own. Twenty-five minutes can take us far far away from our world. We enter the building through locked doors and a metal detector, shlepping our boxes of candy to make gingerbread houses and wrapped books to bring as presents. We always bring a snack. It’s a big deal for all concerned, and I forget each year how my head spins by the time all is said and done. There are always a few moments that dance on my heart and steal my breath. This year was no different.
I always say that life is about moments. Let’s face it, in a typical day I face drudgery, mundane chores, and the lather, rinse, repeat of the endless cycle, all the while pulling out my hair. We all do. But it is the moments, those brief glimpses in my classroom or my home, that make the whole day shine. Today it was the look on Diamond’s face when she learned she got to make a gingerbread house of her very own, and the playful exchange of Katie and Romello as she rubbed his brillo hair. But mostly it was Alexander. He tugged at my legs as I walked by his desk, like all of these students tug at my heart. I stooped to him to see what he wanted and without a word, he grabbed me in a huge hug. I think it was the wordlessness of it all that really got me. I’m not what anyone would term stoic or unbiased to start with. Straight news is not my game. And I don’t live in a world of quiet, that’s for sure. But in such a brief, silent encounter, with his skinny arms wrapped awkwardly around my legs, I definitely got the message.
Then it’s time to go and we leave in a whirl-wind of wrapping paper and smiles and hugs and high fives. We traipse back out through the metal detector and my kids are glowing from ear to ear. I get so discouraged, some years, leaving Junie B. Jones and Dr. Seuss to solve the problems while we hop back into our warm cars to head for home. It’s like emptying the ocean with a teaspoon, really. It seems like a really small gesture that will have little to no impact. Saving the world one gingerbread house at a time? It is a lot to imagine, but it’s all I’ve got. And for Alexander and I and this moment, it’s definitely enough.

Persephone's Fall

2009-12-06T22:32:00.001-05:00

She sits where I sat on the hearth, roaring fire drying her kindling-straight hair. Could it be thirty years ago that this was I? My daughter flips her brown hair, the once sun-kissed blond tresses deepen as the weather plods now toward winter. And so do we. There is no mistaking, now, that the sun has slanted, her rays but half-inclined towards earth as the calendar marches on. Stubborn marigolds cling to life in my white buckets on the porch, and the red zinnia that my daughter planted so long ago blooms still in the back garden. All is not yet lost. But neither is there hope. They are frozen, the last blooms mocking summer and winter both. They belong in neither place these days. Like Persephone they cannot stay or move as they will. And the leaves are down, carted away by serpentine hoses that transform them into mulch. The grass has died, and the season’s first few frosts have tinged it brown. The light is stark and the clouds more grey. The winter is coming quickly now, like some spinning toy with centrifugal force that lumbers clumsily and fast.

Outside today, it is painfully clear through our reddened, chapped hands that winter is very close. Twenty-seven, forty-two, nineteen, HUT! I send her running. Stop on a dime at the garbage can. Turn and catch the ball. The football slips from my daughter’s grasp because her frozen hands are not nimble enough to receive it. And later I fumble Christmas lights atop the ladder, blue sky making way for the crispest of air above my head. The lake stays angry now, and the froth of its mood carries winds to those like us who live close-by. We will hole up very soon against the harshness of that cold.

I take one last trip around the yard to gather the trappings of summer and autumn for their winter sleep. The lawnmower and two-wheelers have the right idea: hibernation. My daughter and I would like that too. We talk often of calling in sick some day together to stay in bed and read our books. We would dine on chicken nuggets and bar-b-que chips while the wind and snow pound our windows, not caring if we dropped crumbs in the bed. Much later we would actually leave our fluffy-pillowed fortress and drink hot cocoa with giant marshmallows and sit by the fire we built in the afternoon light. We would wear our pajamas all day.

There is something here in this snuggling close, in making a fire and in craving the heat. There is something in this little girl drying her hair with the smell of smoke rich in her footie pajamas. There is something about the harshness of winter and the inevitability of its arrival that draws us in to one another and to the frothy tides of times gone by. There is something in my daughter. And in myself.

Earth, Wind and Fire

2009-12-03T14:36:00.001-05:00

He runs like the wind, this son of mine,
Faster than the cheetah we visited at the zoo, he claims.
I know one thing for sure:
He doesn’t have any interest in walking. He zips through this house
And my heart without pausing.
Sometimes he grabs Ritz crackers off the counter as he whizzes by.
And eats them as he runs.
It’s a wonder he doesn’t choke.

He burns like a fire, this child of mine,
Hotter than the reddest coals in my fireplace, I see.
I know one thing for sure:
He has a temper that cannot be quenched with
The largest fireman’s hose.
Sometimes I think his head will explode right off his body
And spew shrapnel in my living room.
It’s a wonder he doesn’t ignite.

He settles close like the earth, sweet boy of mine,
Gentler than the caress of the softest, whitest sand.
I know one thing for sure:
He is the one who will care for me when I am old.
He has an empathy beyond his age
And treats the creatures of the earth with care and love.
He is a fiercely loyal friend and brother
It’s a wonder his heart doesn’t burst.

The Crackle of the Fire

2009-12-03T14:07:00.001-05:00

It will be nine years, soon, since I bought this house. One of the selling points for me was the fireplace, nestled in the corner of an entire brick wall. But I have never lit a fire in this fireplace, until tonight. What is it about me that caused this to be so? How is it that something I wanted so very much could just get pushed aside for years and years? Maybe I waited so long because of my dad. As I was creating my life as a new homeowner, my dad was losing his. Although he drove by once, coming home from one of his many hospital stays, he never came inside. He died shortly after I married, and never got to see me in this home I have tried so hard to make. I’ve wished a million times that he could see my place, his grown up daughter as a mother now, and all of the intricacies of my life as a mom.

And tonight, it’s just another way to miss him. The crackle of the fire. That is what I forgot. I remembered the warmth and the smells. My olfactory memory taking me back to my days of girlhood, watching my dad in his lumberjack plaid pound the snow off of the logs before bringing them inside. It was the crackling sound that I forgot. Tonight the sounds take me back along the time/space continuum to the days that I was the little girl and my father the parent, crumpling newspapers and fanning the flames.

No matter how old I get I still cannot believe that it is ME stoking the fire and that the little girl drying her long golden hair by the fire is long-gone. I remember the Blizzard of 1978. One of my first real memories. I was seven, and the power was out as Lake Erie’s snow machine dumped over a foot of snow and killed the electricity for miles around. My dad hung a blanket on the family room door and spread our sleeping bags out in front of the fire. He stayed up all night to keep the fire going and keep us warm. I remember the pounding at the door, when the city’s police came to evacuate us to the shelter at the high school. My dad would not leave, and when the cop insisted, my dad brought him in to the family room where my two younger sisters were already sleeping. The cop finally understood and let us stay. My dad could keep us warm and fed no matter what the weather.

It is just so ingrained in my head, this picture of him in red flannel with raw hands to match. And the kindling and logs he split just outside the door and piled on the hearth. The way he took my sisters and I to the woods behind the elementary school to search for kindling, teaching us to snap the bigger branches in half across our knees. There was a horse-shaped tree we named Henrietta, and we would climb and ride as we gathered twigs. Of course you never realize it at the time, these seemingly little things that will become important and be the memories that you want to make for your own children. And it is impossible to know that in one glance and smell of a fire you can be simultaneously the mother and the little girl.

I’m not sure that I can parent like him, that my children will learn like I did and the memories will stand the test of time. I don’t know if I am selfless enough to stay up all night to stoke a fire while my offspring sleep, or trudge through a foot of snow to the woodpile out back. I am still new at this game and I don’t have all the rules down yet. But I am giving it my all, and I can light the fire at least. I remember to open the damper and tuck the crumpled paper carefully in with the logs. I bring the kindling inside from the rain to dry and use a homemade fan to help the sparks turn into flames. I’m not sure I can be the parent my dad was for me, but a fire is as good a place as any to start.

Thanksgiving in Disguise

2009-11-25T23:38:00.001-05:00

He opens the fridge a hundred times a day. But I am thankful that his arms and legs work as they should, and that there is food within which he can choose.
He whines for snacks each hour on the hour. But I am thankful that he has a voice and I have a snack with which to quell it.

She flares her independence and rolls her eyes. But I am grateful that she is confident and her green eyes can see clearly.
She drives me nuts with her constant show tunes. But I am thankful for that voice of an angel and her desire to use it.
She wants to take her shoes off outside on the coldest of days. But I am grateful that she has shoes at all and the ability to play.

He refuses to nap and give me my afternoon break. But I am thankful his spirit is strong and he had a warm bed in which to sleep.
He runs circles around the house at breakneck speed. But I am thankful that he can.

All the blessings in my life that I forget, I will try to remember today.
All the behaviors that make me crazy are simply blessings in disguise.
And all the things my children demand, I am able to provide.

So Lord, today let me be thankful for the whining and the stomping and the strong-willed children in my grasp.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Age-Old Dramas I Can't Help but Experience

2009-11-21T12:42:00.000-05:00

My heart is at it again, I’m afraid. This world is too much for me with its babies dying in fires and sons hacking their mothers to death. My heart breaks a little each time I watch the news. But it’s the close at hand reality that really gets me. Today at the library, the five little old ladies in their wheelchairs, shuffling feet propelling them forward. I flash forward myself, to see them back in their nursing home rooms by themselves, living out their days staring at white walls and only ever half reading the books they choose. Or later at the grocery store, the man in his wheelchair-stickered car, stuck halfway in and out of the parking space because his car won’t start. I stop and offer to help. He doesn’t need me and says it will start again soon. He sounds surprised at my offer. I wonder what he is going home to. See the two small blue bags on the seat next to his cane. I imagine what cold house or dark rooms await him tonight. And I wonder about myself. Will all the pieces of my heart be eaten up in these vignettes by the time I reach old age? Or does each encounter fill me up, make me speak more gently, love more deeply, and prepare me for the time when I will be alone, with only the memories of long-ago days for my companions.

Her Forest Room

2009-11-16T20:29:00.001-05:00

They run without coats today, so warm for the middle of November. I cannot fathom that I will have the windows open much longer. But today it is warm air that flutters in with the last of the autumn leaves. She lures her little brother to the forest room, a tiny space in the back corner of our yard, surrounded by good neighbors and their fences. This is her place, my girl. A sanctuary from her days of school and chores and brothers, she has named this corner of the world and takes her dolls there to play pretend. She has asked me to rake the leaves away. Bare dirt massages her bare feet and this is how she likes to play. She is so willing to lose her shoes and her inner critic as she dances and climbs the tree that makes a Y up to the heavens. Her brother spares his shoes, but dances and twirls like the somersaulting leaves. They are Indians, raccoons, Boy Scouts today. Each game of pretend melds into the next until neither one is quite sure where they are. They drum loudly on the overturned garbage can with bats and sticks. Good ear-plugs also make good neighbors. I marvel at these children and their personalities. So free in this back yard to dance and dream and be. Not constrained by shoes or peers or weather. May they always be as free as the leaves that tumble from my half-constructed pile.

Where I'm From

2009-11-13T21:05:00.003-05:00

I am from charred wood and Pine-Sol,
From the smell of beef stew cooking on the stove
And the sound of football announcers on the t.v.

I am from oak trees and tire swings
And a conifer I planted myself on the back patio.
From a tiny house just big enough for love
And a Barbie Convertible and numerous changes of clothes.

I am from Charles and Rosemary and
The Kelly family from Ireland.
From “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”
And “The only thing boring about it is you.”

I am from Irish eyes and cousins picked up at the airport,
From endless summer days in the tomato patch
And nights chasing fireflies and jumping fish in the Bay.

I am from a culture of writers and storytellers
And stories about the one that got away.
From working hard first and then relaxing
With a good book or a good drink.

I am from a giant garbage bag full of photos
Sepia-toned and aging in my mother’s attic.
Some long-forgotten people and memories they made.
The moments of my history unknown,
That I am now condemned or convinced to repeat.

It's Not Nice to Rake the Dead

2009-11-08T18:44:00.002-05:00

The sun sinks lower in the afternoon now, somehow brighter and closer to me, though I know that is not possible. And I stand in my yard, thinking that I have seen this all before. My rake is my pen and I write on the memories I keep. Another fall day. Another leaf pile. Another parent raking and piling just to see his work scattered all around the yard.

The children play hide & seek. I love the magic of the game. Wherever two or more are gathered, the game is renewed when neighbor kids and cousins come to play. They run through my yard on this bright afternoon, too warm for November. They tiptoe through grass in bare feet, toes amazed to be free. They hide in the leaf piles I create. I am careful about where I rake.

The stew cooks on the stove inside. Hearty potatoes and carrots that I peeled myself. The Italian bread lies waiting for butter and grubby outside hands to devour it. My knife is my pen and I serve these memories to my children at dinner.

The leaves are dead. As is my father. So much of what I knew and believed has also died. My rake churns on and scours the grass, the crinkling sound loud in my ears. Reminds me of a joke my sister told. “Are you raking leaves that have died? It’s not nice to rake the dead.” But I must. And I do. On this too warm fall day with the sun hazy and peeking through the trees, I haul these leaves to the curb. I pile the tarp high with crumpled leaves and worn out dreams. I try to pile on all the dead things, hide them in the leaves with broken promises and twigs and missing moments that I thought I knew. The tarp is heavy as I gather the corners, careful not to spill the funeral of my thoughts on my whitewashed lawn. My work goes on. And so do I.

The children run giggling through the yard. And I remember. The stew on the stove in the kitchen. The crinkling of leaves in huge piles. The fun of hide & seek and jumping in piles of leaves. And I wonder if she is buried in the tarp below the leaves: that little girl who dreamed like a queen so many years ago. And suddenly, I am not sure if I am the girl or the parent or the dream. Or maybe I am just a skittish leaf that is tumbling from the tarp today.

Things the Garbage Men Won't Take

2009-11-05T13:00:00.003-05:00

I love the miracle of the garbage men who cart away the rubbish in my life. They arrive so early to my house each Monday they seem like fairies in the night. No running curbside in my pajamas with a forgotten bag; I can never catch these tricky goblins. Plus it’s Monday; who is at their best speed on Monday morning? So yes, the bags and bundles must be flailing on the lawn the night before or they will spend another week stinking up the garage.

They take everything, these guys, and last week they were cursing my name, I am sure. The pile of garbage covered the tree lawn and spilled onto the sidewalk. The detritus of so many years hiding in my garage and attic and basement. Two mattresses that graced the big boy bed of my son, hand-me-downs sagging and stained. A broken table. Another table, functional but ugly. Five bags of regular garbage, banana peels and coffee grounds spilling from their bags. Two baby strollers. One broken soccer net. One thousand little toys from McDonald’s Happy Meals that I snuck into the bottom of the cans. A broken mirror. Already had my seven years of bad luck. It can go too while the guys are at it. An iron fireplace grate given to me by my neighbor. He’s gone too, but it was a beautiful Arizona lady that lured him away. A broken lamp. A piggy bank with no lid, the money already spent anyway. A broken ladder, covered in peach paint. A pile of empty boxes. A tiny bassinet for a baby doll. The little daughter that played with it has also vanished. Yet another table stained with homemade red silly putty and the two matching chairs that were always being used to scale the desk to the fish tank. The puffy slip from under my wedding dress worn so many years ago.

But its what the garbage men won’t take that I am thinking about today. They won’t take tires or fire extinguishers. They can’t be bothered with my broken heart or the bruised ego or giant vacuum of emptiness that are eating up my vision and soul. I even try to trick them like I did with the paint cans. Wrap up these inadequacies, brokenness, unspent dreams and squirrel them away in a box criss-crossed with duct tape. Duct tape covers a multitude of sins I know. But the garbage men caught me that day and ripped the taped boxes open before spilling the cans and paint all over the lawn. It looked like a crime scene. I know better than to sneak things into the garbage these days. And duct tape doesn’t work so well when dealing with feelings and dreams.

And so these things stink up my heart. The books I don’t read to my children. The deeds I don’t do for my sweet mother. The kind words I don’t say to my students. And most of all these days, the pile of garbage is filled with the dreams I never tried for myself, the harshness and emptiness I let others impose on me, the broken pieces that I can’t quite fit back together of the woman I used to be and the one I want to become. And that refuse is doing much more damage than the reeking moldy bags of cheese in my garage.

After Apple Picking

2009-10-22T13:52:00.001-04:00

So many, many rainy mornings and sunny afternoons, that window was my gateway to the field of apple trees across the country road. Like sentries guarding the stories that I taught, the seasons’ leaves budded and fell with Odysseus and Romeo and Huck Finn. I would stare out that window, poised at the podium while students scribbled and fretted, made connections and language. And in my million and one moments, I never once thought of you. I dreamed and pondered, but never once believed that you would be here, a wiry boy of five, clutching your sweating dirt-stained palm to mine.

And now we stand like sentries, action figures hiding from the bad guys in the apple orchard. And now I am on the other side of the window and the other side of the world, it seems. Perspective is a funny thing. You are what I didn’t know to wish for in those dark mornings when the mist rose over the apple trees or those warmest of afternoons when I could hear the shouts of children field-tripping among the apple rows.

And now it is you and I who run through these fields, reaching past our grasp to where the juiciest apples remain unpicked. Your brother and sister join in our game, but it is you that understands the beauty of the fall fields, the miracle of crisp air and worms in green apples and the sting of cider up our noses from the piles of rotting fruit at our feet.

It is you that pulls me back to my grandmother’s yard, so many years ago when I was a girl of your age. Sprawled not in an orchard, but under the one giant apple tree by the bay, I would flatten myself against the earth so the wind would not find me. The October sun beat sparingly, so busy playing peek-a-boo with the clouds. And as I lay, I watched my dad climb the ladder to reach the ripest harvest.

Now you are the sweet son playing peek-a-boo between Rome and Macintosh. And you are the window through which I can see the girl who used to be and the parent I miss so much. And you my son, the apple of my eye, reflect the lessons I sometimes forget: beating the bad guys, searching for honor and apples without worms, and breathing deeply on a sun-kissed fall day.

Matryoshka

2009-10-22T11:45:00.001-04:00

My heart rips a little each time I drive away.
Although I suppose the holes in me leave more
Room for love and dreams and power.
That’s what I like to think anyway.
The longing is a puzzle that rips me up
And then sews me back piece by piece.

And the paradox is that each patch
Makes me stronger. Kiln-fired strength
To use in fierce arenas where I fight
The fires of my days and
The loneliness that snuggles close at night.

My heart is not used to being free.
And my spirit and intellect enjoy your playground too.
The wonder of your piercing eyes and strong hand in mine
And the dimple that dances with your words
Plays on my mind as the wheels roll on.

I drive and drive, trying to stuff the pieces of my heart
Back in the box, as if they can return miraculously, perfectly,
like those Russian nesting dolls.
But they never truly fit this way
And there is no room now for packing peanuts that
Cushion the blows in transit.
The bruises will be deep this time.

The road does not cleanse me as I wish.
The miles of flat fields cannot erase
The smell of you in my hair and
Your voice in my ear.
You stick to me like eyeballs to monsters’ hands
And cat hair to black jeans.
And even in my sadness you make me
Smile.

I love you with the fierce protection of a mother bear
Although I cannot take credit for any of you,
Except for your re-birth in my heart and
The dreams I hear when the lights are out and you
Let me chalk a door around your soul.

Basket of Dreams

2009-10-20T14:20:00.000-04:00

The metaphor of the giant basket of socks does not escape me. This is my life. Unmatched. Ill-fitting. Dirt-stained. Tumbling out over the edges. Irreverent. And a lot like the whac-a-mole game at the county fair. Never ending.

I know that a pair of socks requires two feet. And when the feet are done wearing the socks, one would assume the socks could be gracious enough to stick together through the process of laundry and drying and folding. But it never happens.

I’m not sure if every house has a misfit sock basket, but I certainly do. I dump them all on the floor every once in a while and try to help them partner up. Last time I did that I ended up with 87 mismatched socks. Really.

Which leads me to believe that I live in a land of witchery. How is it possible that after matching all the socks in the house, I have so many left? It’s like the loaves and the fishes. They magically multiply overnight or anytime I turn my back, it seems. Considering that my children would wear the same socks every day if I let them, until the socks could walk without the feet, I wonder why I even have so many pair in the first place?

And I don’t know whether to focus on the extra ones in the basket, or the missing ones that are mocking me. Where do they go? It is common knowledge that dryers eat socks, a Venus fly-trap of sorts. Except without the need for the feet themselves. Or maybe the socks run for the hills sans occupant, afraid of the job that little boys have in store for them, or the adventures they might see. I once saw a man at a party with a sock clinging to the back of his sweater, but unless my friends really don’t like me, I don’t think my native socks are seeking asylum through sweater voyages.

So that leaves me with a giant basket of socks. And the biggest question is what to do about it. I cannot act on this sock basket and its contents, because I know as soon as I throw a sock away, its match will turn up. And it costs good money to buy all these pairs of socks, money which I do not choose to waste. And so they sit there, languishing between usefulness and irony. No more helpful to cold feet than the harsh plastic in which they rest.

And this is my life. So many things beyond use. So many piles and packages and bags full of memories and magic that might be useful some day or may be way beyond their prime. But they are shoved in dark corners in the basement and the garage and my heart. I light a match to my memories, not sure if to illuminate them or burn them to the ground. The fire doesn’t take, and those parts of me tumble like worm-filled apples piled in the orchard’s October sun. And I’m not sure how long I have until the tumbling apples turn rotten or the winter snows obliterate the view. And I’m not sure how much energy I have left to look under sofas and in the recesses of my spirit. And I just don’t know how the pieces will fit when the fire burns low and the ashes remain.

For the Birds

2009-10-20T13:27:00.000-04:00

Blue heron standing, now fleeing.
Sandy feet and grubby paws.
Works to join the gulls in flight.
But not the ostrich.
Never the ostrich.

Sandful shovels, flying into eyeballs,
Buried limbs, torso, chin rising
Like the Phoenix from the sandy cage.
Ideas, traveling through air
Sandy particles fleeing wet towels.

Soon, blue heron perched again, stately
Grubby paws quiet, buried head in sand.
Not flying,
Like the ostrich.

Always the Stories

2009-10-19T20:12:00.002-04:00

The room is buzzing. The energy in the air is palpable. It always shocks me, this picture I see. Forty junior high students fill my classroom. The bell has already rung to end the school day, but they are here for Power of the Pen, the writing team I coach. I marvel every year with the other coach; over two-thirds of our junior high turn out to tell stories after school. Teens have a lot of angst and a lot to say. It is a safe outlet for them to live out their dreams and nightmares through the characters they create. But I still marvel.

And this year there is another side story. My daughter, age seven and full of stories herself, is a de facto member of this team. But I didn’t really realize how much she understood or enjoyed story telling until this week. While I was busy explaining the machinations and inner workings of our club, she polished off her spelling homework so she could get to work on her own stories. I joke that she loves math too much, and has a mind like a naturalist, but apparently she has picked up a few things in the realm of verbal expression as well. She just needs a little more practice with that spelling!

Story one:
I am a aorfin my nam is kara.
I liv in a aofanij I am paor I war rags.
I et drt
I clen
I dot like it!
I got a doptdid I wish my paris wil come back.

Story two:
I am a indein
I liv on a i lid
I liek to clim on thes cocanoos
I love the wotr
Im a good sooimer
I like to drik coknoot melk

I love how language develops. I have been awed as my babies each in their turn made sense of nouns, then verbs, and adjectives and adverbs too. Words fly through the air first as mere repetitions, and then with life and breath of their own. I am amazed by what I do not understand: like synapses linking and thoughts developing. Children understand so much more than they can say. They know innately about character. They understand conflict and longing and the magic of happily ever after too. They can put together a story filled with suspense and drama long before they have the motor skills to do so.

But I feel bad for the legacy of our English language that stymies young writers like my daughter. I am almost jealous of the simple Spanish conjugations and spelling rules that make sense in other languages. I can’t remember a time that I didn’t know the difference between wear, where and were. Or the double consonants on words like will or the world of silent e’s at the end of words. But for a fledgling writer, the rules are cumbersome and awkward, the exceptions that prove the rule too widespread.

But the stories remain. Whether simple stories of Indians and orphans penned by my daughter with slanting lines and misshapen spelling, or more mature prose recounted by teens and egos forging a place in the world, the stories last. And that is what matters.

Mining for Gold

2009-10-12T20:25:00.002-04:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about stories lately. Huge, world renowned tomes, like the epic narrative Moby Dick, whose history and lessons far surpass simply staying away from giant whales. Or smaller works like Dahl’s Witches, which weaves a clever tale spooky enough to keep my children awake long after dark. There are the family stories of my history students: the Polish baby born on the boat to America, the great-grandfather with one glass eye as a result of a war injury, the great-great grandmother that owned a speakeasy in the Flats during prohibition. And my own family stories, like my grandpa playing at FDR’s inaugural ball and having to leave his sax as collateral at the hotel when the banks all closed, or the day my dad rescued some boaters from their sinking dinghy in Lake Erie.

They move us, these stories. They make us who we are. And I’m beginning to think that life is a constant dance of getting the story told, a search for voice and genre and meaning. Maybe we all have a STORY and our life is the fight to figure out how best to express it. And a fight it is. The surface is too easy and the story is too deep. I find the digging complicated on the best of days; mining has always been a dangerous occupation. And the soot and avalanches keep only the bravest from the task.

But really, everyone has a story to tell. I hand pen and paper to reluctant teens and with a little time and effort they mine diamonds from the muck. My offspring recount stories at the top of their lungs with eyes wide as saucers and mystery in their smiles. I have told stories through drama with battered women hiding and re-building, each line a link in their chain to breaking free. And I have witnessed the closing lines of stories cut abruptly short.

And oh, how I worry about these stories that might not be told. The pictures haunt me: a slight boy in a typhoon-ravaged arena, or an elderly man eating dinner alone, glancing endlessly at the wedding ring that he still reverently wears. The young man orphaned early, but too proud to beg or run the streets, or the little girl I know who wants nothing more than to go to school without the burden of the side effects of her disease, and its cure.

But mostly it’s just about me. Stories show me who I am in the dark of a powerless night with only candlelight to illuminate the way. Themes and conflicts spin me as gently as a jackhammer unearthing a treasure. Characters play out on the page and learn lessons far beyond my scope of teaching. My spelunker’s helmet holds just enough light to illumine these nuggets of gold. And they are mine, these stories. Musty, encrusted, none-too-pretty sometimes, but singularly, powerfully mine. What a gift. And I would be a fool not to exhume them.

Can-Do

2009-10-08T13:18:00.001-04:00

No offense to Peter Durand. I’m glad I can enjoy canned foods. Who doesn’t love the metallic taste of peas, or chili that has spent a few months convalescing on a grocery shelf? I love his lack of foresight though; he figured out how to seal food in, but patrons needed a hammer and a chisel to get it out. It only took 48 years to find a solution. That makes me laugh. My praise goes to Ezra Warner, who in 1858 figured out a way to open cans less forcibly; the only problem was that each can had to be opened before it left the store. And so that is why my heart belongs to William Lyman, who in 1870, developed a can opener that could open cans in the comfort of one’s own home without the threat of shrapnel. Sweet William, I thank you for the pleasing taste of peaches in the middle of Ohio’s dark iciness, for soup that melts my snowman children, and for refried beans straight from sunny Mexico in the dead of winter.

And while we are on the topic of cans, I cannot fail to mention America’s favorite, beer in a can. January 24, 1935, the Kruger Brewing Company of Richmond, Virginia sold the first canned beer, “Krueger Cream Ale”. One week to the day before the birth of my father. I hardly think that is a coincidence. I think I speak for my dad when I say we are both grateful for the pop top tab and its unmistakable sound and refreshing taste. Just wonder what took them so long!

Things I Don't Know How to Do

2009-10-06T12:56:00.001-04:00

I don’t know how to bake a clam or make a cake from scratch.
I don’t know how to assemble Tranformers with speed and accuracy.
I don’t know how to drive a stick shift or stick to a topic.
I don’t know how to watch movies without falling asleep or fall asleep without dramas racing through my head.
I don’t know how to French braid or twist pretzels like an Amish girl,
But I do know how to make a tangled mess of things.

I don’t know how to fire a gun or build a fire in my living room,
or my heart for that matter.
I don’t know how to do a front roll dismount or
Get myself out of these tasks that spin me
Endlessly.
I don’t know how to tie knots in rope:
Only in myself.
I don’t know how to water ski or balance on a beam,
Or pet dogs and horses without cringing.

I don’t know how to juggle bowling pins or torches or the myriad tasks
that each day brings.
I don’t know how to run without being chased or
Catch up to the moments in my life that I should cling to.

And I don’t know how to live without spaghettio kisses and crumbs in my bed from
The midnight snack that chased the monsters away.

Autumn Dark

2009-10-05T20:25:00.000-04:00

The grey storm skies of fall
Remind me of that man
Shuffling through the discount store
Counting out his pennies for a half jug of milk.
And the bloated girl whose tumor-ravaged brain
Finally gave up the fight.
And then again the harvest.
Rotten pumpkins and gourds twisting
In the tired soil.
And the moldy apples you pick off the ground
To feed me for my dinner.
The grey suffocates like a too-thick blanket
That never covers my feet.
And so it goes.

Soundtrack of my Life

2009-10-01T13:48:00.003-04:00

A Play in Perpetual Acts
September 30, 2009
7:00-7:15 a.m.

Mom: Get dressed.
Maura: Can we get apples next time we shop? I want to get Jonathan.
Mom: Get dressed.
Marty: Mo-om!!!
Mom: What?
Marty: Help me inside in this.
Maura: (singing at the top of her lungs) Shalom, my good friends. Shalom my good friends. Sha-
Marty: (nearly screaming) That’s the one that gets me scared! It’s like a ghost singing.
Mom: Get dressed.
Maura: No, it’s God’s praise.
Marty: You’re getting me scared.
Mom: What would you like for breakfast?
Maura: Spheres! I told you I wanted spheres, not flakes!
Marty: Maura, Sam Baker is really real, but he losed his eyesight.
Maura: Mom!
Marty: He was riding on a train and some bad guys blew it up.
Mom: Marty, put your shoes on.
Sean: Mom, picken me up!
Marty: (noticing Mom pouring juice which we have not had in a long time) Mom, it’s like old times!!
Mom: Finish your breakfast and brush your teeth. Marty, put your shoes on.
Maura: Shalom, my good friends….
Marty: STOOOPPPPP!
Sean: Mo-om. Shoes on. Two shoes. Open door me.

Theater of Justice

2009-10-01T13:22:00.002-04:00

A field trip like no other. Sixty kids in plaid skirts and belted blue trousers enter the courtroom of Judge John J. Russo, trying to be invisible. Kind of like elephants trying to do ballet. We do not belong here, and are conspicuous in every way. We have come for the drama of real life in the city of Cleveland, currently the nation’s poorest. It’s like a play; we audience members wait nervously for the actors to get in place.

Instead of the curtain, the pounding of the gavel and “All rise” bring us to attention. Scene one: one defendant and his defense attorney share a whispered conference, and incongruously, a giggle. Case 525655 rises to his feet, and the tag he forgot to remove from his new shirt flaps under his arm. Drug trafficking the charge, a fifth degree felony, but he was merely complicit. Trying to make his life work on his eight dollar an hour job at Brown’s Stadium, and trying to help a friend without a driver’s license. Got caught in the driver’s seat and the web of justice. It was his nephew who ran from the cops that night. They both get another chance. He notices his audience and takes a moment for a monologue to the crowd: “This incident was a bad choice. Shows you how a quick bad decision can lead to trouble.” I’ve said it to these students a million times. Maybe they will learn it better from a man who just avoided a year in jail.

The next character was not so lucky. There is nothing inconspicuous about a man in an orange jumpsuit with his hands handcuffed behind his back. I can see his id bracelet, like the kind they give newborns to keep them from getting mixed up; unfortunately, this man is already lost. Case 526428 is convicted of attempted rape of a five-year old boy. I can see my girls across the courtroom wince. Took the breath right out of us to see this monster in real life. A tier-three sex offender, he will report to authorities every ninety days for the rest of his life. I can’t believe that he didn’t even say he was sorry. Like some strange audience interactive theater, I find myself sitting between the now nine-year old victim, and the rapist’s sobbing lady love. Her flowered shirt pops into my line of vision as the judge hands down six years in the Grafton Correctional Facility. The sentence for young Andrew will not be so brief, I’m afraid.

Scene three opens with a large man stuffed into his pin-striped suit; white tube socks and ripped up black shoes complete the ensemble. Case 5171817 is charged with 134 counts of pandering and child pornography, and has previously pled guilty to 16 second degree felonies. Today he wants to change his plea because, as his lawyer claims, he just didn’t understand what pleading guilty meant. The judge doesn’t buy it. I watch the grimaces of my students as the prosecutor outlines the sordid details of pornographic assaults on minors that the defendant was accused of disseminating. The defendant apologizes and cannot stifle his sobs. His children at home need a daddy; there is a baby on the way. And he has been married for seventeen years. I cannot help but notice that she is not in the courtroom today. As he pleads for his freedom a deputy walks in, a dramatic tool of foreshadowing. I marvel that he is sentenced to two years in prison in front of a room full of the same type of children he victimized. This dramatic irony is a ghastly final scene for us.

Back on the bus the students joke and giggle to let off steam. But we don’t get much done for the rest of the day. Even eating our lunch is difficult this afternoon. We are caught in a new web of understanding; the play was a little too vivid, and our lives just a touch too sheltered. But this is not like Halloween and its fake costuming. The world houses some real-life monsters that we have just witnessed. My students seem very thankful somehow to be back to familiar scenery. But I think it is a play that will long be remembered.

Living in Dirt

2009-09-22T20:02:00.001-04:00

Dirt. Grime. Earth. Loam. Mud. Muck. Soil. This is all I think about. Really. It overwhelms me. I don’t think I exaggerate when I say that this topic takes up my entire life. Little boys covered in slime, dirt in their fingernails and ground into heels. Worm farms planted in the sand table, oozing onto the patio like lava bubbling from a mountain. A girl with grimy socks from her antics at gymnastics, and sometimes slimy teeth from only pretending to brush.

Dirt covers the floor of my kitchen. And my family room. And the garage. I sweep it and it reappears; the elfin magic only works one way. I have yet to teach the leprechauns how to clean. Filth tumbles from my cupboards and hides under my couch. And don’t even get me started on the closets. The pile of dirty clothes could build me a stairway to the attic, but why would I go up there? It too is filled with grime.

The bathroom is its own abomination. I’ll never understand the irony of the shower and how someplace that is supposed to get me so clean can end up so disgustingly filthy. And little boys don’t have much aim when dealing with toilets, either. The toothpaste is smeared on the wall and the sink.; no wonder their teeth aren’t clean. And for show, the toilet paper is unfurled like an (extra-long) symbol of freedom that is a royal carpet of sorts.

And that is just my house. The yard is a mess in its own right. A giant serpentine mound of Aztec delight lies over my new million-dollar sewer pipe. There is nothing children don’t love about a giant mound of dirt. (Hence the dirt in my house I suppose). My driveway’s a mess from the endless nights of raccoon-spilled garbage cans and dribbling popsicles and snacks. The garden, although ALLOWED to be filled with dirt, is a hodge-podge of trails and random hills where the worm farmers have been working. The swingset is covered in spider webs and the sandbox is blanketed in muck.

And although I do not lay claim to a dirty mind, or at least no dirtier than the law allows, my noggin is filled to the brim with clutter. There are lists unwritten and letters not sent. There are plans for dinners and birthday parties and time frames for cleaning the actual dirt. There are soccer schedules and reading books and Magic School Bus and building rockets out of cups. Sometimes there is quiet. But even the quiet is pretty messy up there and it jumps from reading to grading to writing and then naturally ends with me in a huge mound of crumpled humanity on the floor. Now who is going to clean ME up?

Emotional Outlets: Must Sing and Dance

2009-09-21T20:44:00.000-04:00

I never thought of myself as necessarily that unenthusiastic, but lately I have begun to wonder. It started at Beauty and the Beast a few weeks ago. I took my daughter to see a local production, and it seems I have somehow unleashed the musical theater muse into my house. I just love a life where you are filled with so much emotion that the only option you are left with is breaking into song. When you’re sad you must sing. When you are happy you must sing. And kudos to you when you can get the townspeople to join in with you. My daughter has caught the bug. She sings in the car when her brothers hit her, at the top of her lungs of course. She sings to request her Lucky Charms and milk. Hunger is a catalyst for singing I suppose. She sings in the shower. Oh there are endless concerts as she runs up my water bill. Funny that you can have emotion that bubbles over your regular spoken voice; you MUST sing!

Call me unexcitable, but I feel the same way when I watch my six-month old nephew play. When I smile at him he stares back at my with his toothy grin, and he starts working his little feet a mile a minute. He kicks so excitedly that he rocks his chair on the floor. I suppose I should take it as a compliment. His little body is just not big enough to contain his joy at a smile from me! He’s just gotta’ move! I can’t say the same for myself. I don’t recall the last time that a smile or a bit of news moved me from my seat. I just can’t see myself getting that excited and kicking and kicking. Although I’ve never been on fire in my recent memory, so I guess I can’t really say for sure.

And then there are the countless shivers and shakes of my children, when their whole body flays in revulsion, usually at something I’ve cooked. They don’t just roll eyes or turn up their noses; they have a whole technique that looks like something halfway between catching a chill and doing a breakdance. They save the best physical gymnastic maneuvers for lasagna. No offense to Italy, but they really hate it

So perhaps I need to work on my excitement level. I need some practice in whole-body non-verbal communication, I suppose. And throw in some singing lessons on the side. If you’re not careful, though, I just might turn up when you least expect it to get you involved in a chorus of sorts, filled with high kicks and body shakes of all varieties. Then we will really prove how enthusiastic we are!!

The Python's Squeeze

2009-09-20T21:06:00.001-04:00

I don’t believe what they say. Dark is just dark. I don’t subscribe to the notion that it is darker before the dawn, or that every thorn has a rose. There are no silver linings in these clouds that pelt my head with rain. The inky black of night settles in, oppressive fingers wrap me in their grasp. Pythons do not release their grip; they simply squeeze tighter when the victim squirms. And squirm I do, to no avail. When they find my lifeless body I will have clawed that snake to bits.

This too shall pass is a misnomer, I think. Oh it might pass, but then like a merry-go-round it will pass this way again and again. All good things must come to an end, and all bad things will begin anew. My glass is half empty and filled with poison. These are things I know for sure. Don’t ask Oprah; she and her zillions of dollars can look on the sunny side of the street. But I know the truth. When it rains it pours. And the water pounding my parka is cold and acidic. There will be no rainbow today. I can think positive and reach for the stars, but the deluge clogging my gutters does not lie. And, oh, my sump pump just broke.

My Intensivist

2009-09-17T19:59:00.000-04:00

There really is not a good way to describe him and what he means in my life. I have tried to name this in my head and my heart, and always come away speechless. And that is no easy task really, to render me without voice. He is a force. A reminder. A firebrand. A cattle prod. A friend. He has a softer side, but he doesn’t use it much. Sometimes we both forget it’s there. He came out of nowhere to shatter my peace. And gave to me the strength that I somehow already thought I had. The word I have settled on: intensivist.

He is like my doctor in the ICU, the one who makes sure that all systems are going and accounted for. The one who guarantees that the sickest of patients get the care they need and are well rested for the journey of recovery. And yes, he is intense. Follows his own dreams and lives for himself. Demands that I do the same. Kindles the fire and then sticks around to stoke the flames. I like that in a person. I need it too.

It’s complicated. Life always is. And things that are worthwhile are not easy or processed like Kraft American singles. German cheeses are strong of course, like a cambozola or the infamous adopted limburger. There is nothing delicate about this man, either.

Except when there is. There are moments when he forgets himself and lets me in. A moment of serenity, perhaps, to stare at a river, or the telling of a long lost story or sharing of an inside joke. Sometimes I wish I could have more of this. I would buy him emotions like you purchase crayons: eleven different shades of blue maybe, or a box of 64 with sharpener included. He has trouble with that part, the showing of his true colors.

But mostly I just appreciate him. Worry about him. Care about him. It is a decision to take a chance and be a friend and link a soul to mine. There is no dictionary definition for what we have. And I am glad. I enjoy the adventure and the intensity of it, and the silence. Some people might call him stoic, but I know a little about the man behind the mask. And I am grateful to have an intensivist like him on my side.

Sounding My Barbaric Yawp

2009-09-15T19:48:00.001-04:00

“Most men live lives of quiet desperation.” Thoreau said that in a bout of living in the woods, I think. And tonight I beg to differ. Most men don’t even know what they are missing. They (and most women) seem to accept the day-to-day grind and the mundane of life. They are content with their beer and their football; they cash their paychecks and go out for a steak dinner every two weeks. They watch the world spin as they wake, shower, work, eat dinner, and fall asleep in front of the television. Each tomorrow is a carbon copy of today for them. They get drunk on Friday nights.

It is I who am desperate. And I don’t feel all that quiet about it either. My poet’s heart is filled with longing, dissatisfied with the status quo of my daily life. I wake, shower, work, eat dinner, and fall asleep in front of my computer while trying to spill my thoughts on the page, writing my heart. The daily grind is there, but I try to rise above it. I watch the sun set. I kiss worms. I marvel at the crispness of the air as I go about my daily list of must-do’s. But all the while, I know this is not enough for me.

And my desperation is getting louder. It is the living deliberately that I am stuck on. The path of least resistance versus the path of full living. And I’m not really sure where I fit. I find it sticky and difficult to choose the ways to spend my time. I have children to mother. I have friends to tend. I have housework to accomplish. And the list goes on. I beat myself up. Yes, I could probably do all of these things mindfully if I were out in the woods by myself. But here in this world of spelling words and birthday parties, washing sheets and clipping nails, I can’t really find my balance. I can barely find my voice.

What’s a woman to do? I’m sucking marrow through broken straws and trying to write straight with crooked lines. I know there is more for me but I can’t quite reach it from here; grasping at those broken straws gets old after a while, I think. As for me, I remain loudly desperate. Perhaps a barbaric yawp would do the trick.